LEGENDS KARAOKE & MORE: From WCW to ECW to TNA, James Mitchell has been almost everywhere and done almost everything. The Columbia native returns to the Carolinas this summer to host "Legends Karaoke & More," a late-night Saturday night funfest at fanfest!

The former "Sinister Minister" in the original ECW is an entertaining host, a music aficionado, and will add an exciting new element to our yearly gatherings.

Mitchell, who debuted in World Championship Wrestling in the late-1990's, managing Mortis (the late Chris Kanyon,) and more recently, as Father James Mitchell, managed Raven and Abyss in TNA, will be signing autographs and posing for photos with fans on Saturday afternoon, August 3.

Dave Millican is making several of his belts available for photo ops:-In individual photo ops with former NWA World tag team champions The Midnight Express, Rock-n-Roll Express, Ivan Koloff, Don Kernodle, Jerry Brisco, Ole Anderson or Manny Fernandez, you'll be able to use Dave's NWA World tag team belts, cast from the original NWA World tag team belts!

-In individual photo ops with Ken Patera or Baron Von Raschke, you'll be able to use the original, ring-used AWA World tag team belt.

-In individual photo ops with former United States champions Tully Blanchard and Magnum T.A. (or the photo op of the two of them together,) you'll be able to use the original, ring-used NWA United States championship belt that both of them wore (silver version that was retired by Magnum when they gave him a new gold US belt.)

-In individual photo ops with Tully Blanchard, you'll be able to use the original, ring-used NWA TV title belt he wore in the pre-"World" TV title days.

All featured guests will be available for individual photo ops. Team/Group photo ops include:

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 12, 2013 12:17:51 GMT -5

Few performers have left more of a mark on Mid-Atlantic wrestling than "The Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff. For decades the menacing Muscovite mat terror drew the wrath of frenzied fans as he spoke in a raspy Russian voice, wore heavy stomping boots, toted his trademark Russian chain, and boasted the cross and sickle emblazoned on his ring garb. The beard, shaved dome and jagged forehead all served as a testament to his rugged brand of wrestling.

Koloff will be a featured guest at this summer's Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest Weekend August 1-4 at Hilton University Place Hotel in Charlotte. He has attended a number of previous Fanfests where he is always a big favorite.

"It's always an exciting event. I still consider myself a fan," says Koloff. "I've loved wrestling since I was 8 years old. I was a fan then and still am to this day. The fans at Fanfest are the same way. They're thrilled to be able to meet some of the old-timers and fans they've met over the years. In many cases they've ended up becoming friends. It's the same with the boys. Some of the boys I haven't seen in years and years. Fanfest has made up for that. It's wonderful to see my old friends again."

Koloff's ring career, which spanned nearly half a century, is a storied one.

Perhaps his biggest accomplishment occurred in January 1971 at Madison Square Garden when he ended Bruno Sammartino's record 7 1/2-year run as WWWF heavyweight champion and permanently etched his name in wrestling history.

It would mark the real start of the Canadian-born Koloff's illustrious career as one of the most convincing and notorious heels in the business.

Koloff admits he was still quite green for such a high-profile program with the legendary Italian strongman. It didn't take long, though, for Sammartino to smarten up his younger opponent.

"Ivan, do you realize as the heel, you're supposed to be the general in the ring?" he asked Koloff.

"Bruno was my hero, and asking me to be the leader in the ring was something," says Koloff. "He could have told me to jump, and I would have asked how high. It was such an honor just to work with him."

Koloff served as a transitional champion between Sammartino and Pedro Morales, to whom he dropped the title a month later, but says he'll never forget when he dethroned Sammartino in front of a packed house at the Garden.

"I'm still a mark when it comes to Bruno," he laughs.

Koloff began his wrestling career in 1961. His trainer suggested that the then- curly, red-haired youngster wrestle as a one-eyed Irish rogue named Red McNulty.

"That Irishman did all right, but he ended up dying on the snowbank in Calgary," jokes Koloff, who went through Stu Hart's Stampede promotion en route to Johnny Rougeau's Montreal-based outfit. It was Rougeau who gave him the name Ivan Koloff, and the rest is history.

Koloff played the Russian heel to the hilt. He admits he didn't learn much Russian at first, and instead always kept managers close by to do the talking while he made nasty faces.

"I had a lot of good teachers who gave me a lot of good advice. But it was a slow process. It was a combination of a French accent, like one of my other heroes, Mad Dog Vachon, and what I thought a Russian would talk like. I would also stand on the right when I was interviewed so I'd look bigger, keep my arms folded and my chin up high."

He began embellishing his new evil Cold War persona by running around the ring prior to his matches and attacking his opponents.

"Just like a mad, crazy Russian would," says Koloff, who shaved his head, put on 50 pounds of muscle and looked ominous in his new role.

"It caught on."

Among Koloff's many titles: the WWWF heavyweight title, the IWA tag team title with Mad Dog Vachon in Japan, the Canadian singles title, the Canadian tag team belts, the world tag team title on four different occasions (with Ray Stevens, The Crusher, Don Kernodle and Nikita Koloff), the world's six-man tag team title twice, the Florida state championship, the Georgia state championship and the Mid-Atlantic TV title. Koloff would become one of the top draws for Crockett Promotions during successful stints in the '70s and '80s. One of his biggest runs was during the mid-'80s when Koloff, along with "nephew" Nikita Koloff , was leader of a Soviet contingent that included Krusher Khruschev and Vladimir Pietrov. None, of course, were actually Russian, but the gimmick was an unqualified success.

Koloff, who lives near Greenville, N.C., with his wife Renae, has many fond memories of his time in the Carolinas and Virginia.

"We'd travel 250, 300 miles a night going from town to town, and sometimes we'd have a little party after the match. Fights, tearing up hotels, crazy stuff. You'd be put in jail for that kind of thing today. But we had some good, exciting times."

"It was all such an adventure, but it went so fast since you're wrestling every night and there were such long trips," he adds. "Every night, whether it was in a car or staying over, it was like a get-together with the boys talking about the past and their matches. It was just a good time."

That's one of the reasons Koloff enjoys attending Fanfest Weekend.

"I really enjoy going there and bringing back memories of those bygone years."

The once-hated "evil Russian" is now spreading a much kinder, gentler message.

Koloff, who became a born-again Christian in 1996, is active in a number of charitable organizations, and is an ordained minister who travels to churches and prisons to share his testimony and spread the message of the gospel.

He still makes occasional appearances at independent wrestling shows in the area, shaking his steel Russian chain and mugging for an audience that still fondly remembers him all these years later.

The soft-spoken man with the gentle soul maintains the shaved pate and beard for effect.

"People come up to me and ask me if I'm really Ivan Koloff. They eye me up and down. Especially old ladies. They're not sure if they've forgiven me or not."

For more information on this summer’s Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest Weekend, visit MidAtlanticLegends.com

-Mike Mooneyham, a writer and editor with Charleston's The Post and Courier since 1979, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on professional wrestling, and his weekly wrestling column has been in continuous publication longer than any other in the country.

Ivan is a Fanfest favorite. Just a tremendously nice guy who truly enjoys the weekends and seeing the fans and his fellow wrestlers. He's one of those guys that can be brought in every year and the core Fanfest fan base will be happy. This photo is from 2009. Please forgive my attempts at looking like a bad ass.

I'll be posting more later, right now I have to get on the road for an appointment.

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 13, 2013 9:52:11 GMT -5

As the saying goes, they’ve saved the best for last. And in the case of Les Thatcher, that old showbiz axiom certainly rings true.

For his many contributions to the profession, Thatcher has been named as the first honoree for the 2013 Hall of Heroes. He will be honored during this summer's Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest Weekend in Charlotte August 1-4.

"It’s quite an honor," says Thatcher, "because I’ve seen a list of the guys who preceded me."

Thatcher, though, is more than deserving to take his place among the storied Mid-Atlantic territory’s greats.

"The Carolinas, Mid-Atlantic, Crockett Promotions was a big part of my entire career. Out of the 20 years that I wrestled, almost nine of them were in the Carolinas," says Thatcher.

Few performers have worn more hats in the wrestling business.

Whether it was announcing alongside Gordon Solie and Bob Caudle, or trading holds with Ric Flair and Harley Race, Thatcher always was a perfect fit.

Thatcher, who at age 72 remains the eternal teenager, made his pro debut on July 4, 1960, against Cowboy Ronnie Hill in Blue Hill, Maine, after training at promoter Tony Santos’ wrestling school in Boston.

Born Leslie Alan Malady in Cincinnati, Ohio, Thatcher caught the wrestling bug early. At the tender age of 8, watching the action on a friend’s 10-inch, black-and-white TV screen, Thatcher was hooked. "It just reached out and grabbed me," he says.

Thatcher was a multi-sport athlete in high school and even added drag racing to his repertoire, but it was the larger-than-life characters from the colorful world of wrestling that he looked up to.

"Buddy Rogers was my childhood idol. If there’s one regret I have in all my years in the business, I guess it would be that I never had the opportunity to wrestle Buddy."

It was in the Carolinas and Virginia, working under the Jim Crockett promotional banner, that Thatcher saw perhaps his greatest success.

"Jim Crockett Sr. gave me my first shot at television as a play-by-play man, and Jimmy Jr. cut me loose with the magazine. We developed some things that had never been done in wrestling magazines before. There are so many good memories here."

One of Thatcher’s favorite matches from his Mid-Atlantic days was teaming with perennial tag champs George Becker and Johnny Weaver in a six-man bout against The Masked Infernos (Frankie Cain and Jimmy "Rocky" Smith) and manager J.C. Dykes at the Charlotte Coliseum on Christmas night 1967.

"That was the first big coliseum show that I was a part of the main event. It was a big thrill. We set a record that night for a Christmas show."

A hotly contested Coliseum bout several months earlier had set up the showdown. That night Thatcher was called to duty as a referee when one of the officials was injured early in the contest.

"Angelo Martinelli was the ref that evening, and he went down at the end of the first fall. The other two referees had left the building," recalls Thatcher.

Becker and Weaver would win the next two falls, with sub ref Thatcher making the count, and pandemonium would soon break out.

The post-match altercation culminated with Dykes igniting Thatcher’s face with a fireball.

"One of the Infernos pinned my arms at the end of the match, and they burned me," says Thatcher.

Becker and Weaver cleared the ring while Thatcher, in street clothes, grimaced in pain on the mat. Weaver wrapped his towel around the youngster’s face and helped him back to the dressing room.

The stage was set, and for the next several weeks, Thatcher masterfully sold the injury, whetting the fans’ appetite for the big blowoff to come.

"We went from there and built to the big Christmas show," says Thatcher.

To give it an even bigger build, both Thatcher and Dykes wrote point/counterpoint columns in the weekly wrestling program leading up to the match.

"That’s where the ‘Wrestler’s Eye View’ column got started," says Thatcher. "(Longtime photographer) Gene Gordon talked to Mr. Crockett, and he said it was OK if I wanted to do sort of a dueling thing with Dykes in the program. So between Gene and I, we came up with ‘Wrestler’s Eye View,’" a trademark that Thatcher still uses today.

Thatcher remembers being more than a little nervous and uneasy as he approached the building that night.

"I wanted to go out and look, but I was afraid to because if we didn’t have a good house, there was only one guy in that six-man match who hadn’t been in such a big main event before, and that was me. If it wasn’t going to draw, then I knew who the scapegoat. was going to be."

Thatcher’s fears were quickly put to rest, however, when longtime Charlotte ring announcer George Harbin walked into the dressing room and told the youngster, "We’ve got a hell of a house!"

"That took a lot of pressure off of me," says Thatcher.

The four-month program came to a close with Thatcher, Becker and Weaver defeating their opponents, but not before turning the fiery red-headed manager’s face into a crimson mask and taking the hood off one of the masked men.

"It really was one of the highlights of my career," says Thatcher.

Another reason Thatcher has a special affinity for the Carolinas is because he met his future wife, Alice, in Charlotte in 1967. She wound up marrying another wrestler, the late Buddy Diamond, and didn’t reconnect with Thatcher until 2001. A year later the two tied the knot.

"I chased her for 35 years but finally caught her," jokes Thatcher.

Thatcher’s technical expertise on the mat earned him praise and accolades not only among his colleagues, but also among promoters who would often use Thatcher to elevate other talent.

As smooth as the perennial world junior heavyweight championship contender was in singles competition, he also was a tag-team specialist, with his various Mid-Atlantic partners including the likes of Rudy Kay, Jim "J.J." Dillon, Abe Jacobs, Amazing Zuma, Scott Casey, Nelson Royal and Danny Miller. With Roger Kirby and Dennis Hall, Thatcher formed a popular "Wrestling Cousins" faction in various Southern territories from 1996-69.

Thatcher was voted NWA Rookie of the Year in 1966 after beating out such competition as Terry Funk and Bobby Shane.

"They made all the money and I got the trophy," he jokes.

Thatcher, a Southern junior heavyweight champion, also boasted a number of regional and NWA world tag-team titles in various territories. He held the Mid-America version of the NWA world tag title with Hall and the NWA U.S. tag title with Hall, Kirby and Bearcat Brown, the NWA Southern tag title with Brown, the NWA Tennessee tag title with Hall, Whitey Caldwell and twice with Royal.

Thatcher formed a top team with Eastern States champion Danny Miller, younger brother of Dr. Big Bill Miller, in the Mid-Atlantic area in 1971.

"Les was a top performer, and I was honored to have him as a tag-team partner," says Miller. "He thought about the promotion and not himself. There were a lot of other popular tag teams while we were there in the Mid-Atlantic area. I think Les and myself proved we were pretty good as a team."

Miller recalls one match in Norfolk, Va., when fans jumped into the ring and carried the victors out on their shoulders.

"The TV cameras were also there inside the ring that night. We often wondered why the booking agent at that time didn’t want to pursue us as a team a little stronger than they did. They had a good opportunity, but they didn’t take advantage of it."

"Les was very talented, and we had a great time together," adds Miller. "He was like a brother to me."

As a TV announcer and color commentator, the personable Thatcher got to share the mic with a "who’s who" of wrestling broadcasters that included such stalwarts as Gordon Solie, Bob Caudle, Lance Russell, Ed Capral, Charlie Platt and Jim Ross, while working for such territorial companies as Georgia Championship Wrestling, Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, Southeastern Championship Wrestling and Smoky Mountain Wrestling.

Thatcher’s smooth style and intelligent discourse on the mic, similar to today’s version of Jim Ross, earned him praise from a legion of fans who considered him believable and trustworthy.

A true Renaissance man of wrestling, Thatcher also wrote for a number of wrestling publications, and helped publish and produce the first-ever color WWWF magazine in 1978.

Thatcher, who hung up the tights in 1980, had a hand in the gym and bodybuilding business between 1987 and 1994. He was involved in the designing, building and managing of two Cincinnati area gyms during that time.

Thatcher also tried his hand at professional bodybuilding. He competed in 14 contests over a seven-year stretch, winning first place in five contests, second on three outings, and third three times, only placing out of the money in three shows.

Thatcher launched Heartland Wrestling Association, a Cincinnati-based promotion and training school that served as a developmental territory for both WWE and WCW, after retiring from the ring. He helped develop a number of future talents including Nigel McGuinness, Dean Ambrose, Matt Stryker, Jamie Noble, B.J. Whitmer, Charlie Haas and Shark Boy.

Thatcher also helped produce the Brian Pillman Memorial Shows during the late 1990s and early 2000s, raising money for Pillman’s family and featuring talent from WCW, WWF and ECW, as well as local and indy performers.

He sold his business in 2003 and began doing a series of weekend training camps with Harley Race and Ricky Steamboat under the Elite Pro Wrestling Training banner.

Earlier this year Thatcher and David Jackson launched a new outfit called Wrestling Cares Association. The promotion is holding several events, with a percentage of the promotion’s live gate being donated to different charitable organizations in the area.

"We’re going to open a school in L.A. under the Elite Pro Wrestling Training Banner," he adds.

Thatcher already has been honored by the Cauliflower Alley Club with the group’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and was the inaugural inductee into Smoky Mountain Wrestling’s Hall of Fame.

He says he is looking forward to this year’s Fanfest event in Charlotte.

"Of all the Fanfests I’ve attended, this one will be the best. There’s no doubt about it."

Today Thatcher’s extensive knowledge of the wrestling business lives on through his many students that carry on his mantra of "master your craft."

But he’ll never forget his days in the Mid-Atlantic area.

"I’ve had fun. It’s been a heck of a ride."

-Mike Mooneyham, a writer and editor with Charleston's The Post and Courier since 1979, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on professional wrestling, and his weekly wrestling column has been in continuous publication longer than any other in the country.

Something I love about the Hall of Heroes is the attempt to honor people who have certainly made the contributions to the business to earn such an honor, but typically wouldn't get it (in addition to some who pretty clearly deserve it.) Les Thatcher certainly fits that bill.

I met Les at the 2010 event and he definitely seemed to be enjoying the whole experience and interacting with the fans. I got my dad into the photo op because he remembers Les as a TV announcer and occasional wrestler in the old Knoxville territory.

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 13, 2013 10:04:45 GMT -5

More than three decades have passed since John Walker has heard those nightly roars from the crowd that would get his blood pumping and adrenaline flowing. Rabid fans would explode into chants of "Two! Two! Two!" as the white-masked hero set his opponent up for his signature, running "million-dollar kneelift."

Nowadays, at age 79, Walker's physical feats are but a distant memory, but the cheers from those adoring fans who idolize the man known as Mr. Wrestling #2 remain golden. While Walker admits his memory might be fading, the rush he got from his days in the wrestling business will be with him until the day he dies.

"You just don't forget something like that," he says. "It was a wonderful time. I wouldn't trade it for anything."

Walker hopes to relive some of those magical memories as a featured guest at this summer's Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest Weekend August 1-4 at the Hilton University Place Hotel in Charlotte. That weekend, he says, can't get here soon enough.

"It's fantastic. I can't wait to get there," says Walker, whose alter ego as Mr. Wrestling #2 catapulted him to the hierarchy of the profession during the '70s and early '80s.

While Walker is eagerly looking forward to his Charlotte return, he hopes to leave this time in a little better shape than he departed nearly three years ago. "Yes, for God's sake, yes," he laughs. But it wasn't a laughing matter when he suffered a heart attack during the final day of the 2010 event, just two days after being inducted into the Hall of Heroes, and was hospitalized for several weeks.

"It was the first heart attack I had ever had, and I didn't even know I had it then. I had a hard time breathing, but I didn't have any pain," he recalls.

Walker says he was sitting on the edge of his hotel bed when a friend from Atlanta called to say hello and ask how he was doing. "I'm doing fine except for the fact that I can't breathe," Walker told his friend, who immediately hung up the phone and called the emergency room of a nearby Charlotte hospital. Before Walker knew it, he was being carted off to a medical facility across the street.

"You've had a heart attack, young man," emergency technicians informed Walker. "I had never been ill in my life ... at least not that kind of ill," says Walker, who thought the EMTs had to be kidding.

They were deadly serious, though, and Walker spent the next few weeks hospitalized, waiting for a kidney problem to clear up before he could undergo a triple bypass. "The doctor said they were going to take good care of me. I told him it was a good thing they were, because I was going to come after him if he didn't," Walker laughs. "He thought that was funny as heck. But he did a fantastic job."

"I'm doing well now, I'm feeling great, and I just walked in the door from the gym," says Walker, who still works out four times a week. While he tries to exercise as often as he can, he's not quite ready to execute a running knee lift. "I don't think so. I think I hung that up a few years back."

That's not to say he doesn't miss being around professional wrestling. "I really miss those fans. Truly I do."

Walker waxes nostalgic as he looks around his home and sees his many plaques and trophies on display. "It reminds me of the good days," he says. "The fans made my day. They were true fans. I remember being at an event and the crowd starting that "Two! Two! Two!" thing. It brought tears to my eyes. It really did."

And there's no better fans, he says, than the ones in his old stomping grounds of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. "The fans there are just unreal. They are true fans and I love them. I worship every dadgum one of them," says the former 10-time Georgia heavyweight champion. "Charlotte, Charleston, Atlanta, all the way down through the South. Even in Florida. I got over in Florida like gangbusters. The response was just unreal. I can't say enough good things about them."

Walker also has close ties to the Carolinas - especially Charleston, South Carolina. "I was born right there in Charleston, at the old St. Francis Hospital. That's how I got my middle name," says Walker, whose middle name is Francis.

Walker isn't sure how long he lived in Charleston since he was only a toddler when his family moved. "My dad was in the Marine Corps, so we bounced around quite a bit," says Walker, whose mother is buried in Charleston.

Being a Marine brat, Walker bounced around quite a bit during his early years. He spent most of his life in Hawaii, having moved there in the late '40s before leaving in 1958 to go on the road. He returned to Honolulu in 1989 after retiring from the wrestling business and has lived there ever since.

Walker, who came up through the amateur ranks, began his pro career in Hawaii where he wrestled sumo-style for three years. "That was my first go-around in the wrestling business. I got thrown through the air with the greatest of ease by this monster sumo wrestler," he recalls.

What's fascinating about Walker is that he actually experienced two distinct careers - one as Johnny "Rubberman" Walker and one as Mr. Wrestling #2. The transformation was nothing short of incredible.

For years Walker competed as a journeyman, going from one territory to another, never staying in one area for more than a few months at a time. "That's just the way the business was back then. Promoters didn't want you to stay too long because you'd wear out your welcome. But it wasn't bad. They treated me right and I did well. It was an experience I will never ever forget."

Walker had basically gotten out of the wrestling business, buying a house and opening up a gas station in Kingsport, Tennessee, when he got a call from Atlanta booker Leo Garibaldi. "I was sort of semi-retired, but I was kind of crazy to do that," says Walker. "Leo called me on the phone one day and told me he had a spot for me. I asked him what he was talking about." Garibaldi explained that he had a wrestler by the name of Mr. Wrestling (Tim Woods), and that he wanted me to come down and put a mask on."

Walker told Garibaldi that he had tried a mask once in Florida, but had nearly gagged himself wearing the hood. "It's something you've got to get used to," says Walker, who was prodded into agreeing to give Garibaldi's plan a shot. "He gave me a guarantee, so I finally went to Atlanta and put the mask on."

And the rest was history.

Sporting a white mask trimmed in black, Walker would become the top star on the nation's first SuperStation, Channel 17 out of Atlanta, and would be a staple in Georgia for the next decade. Walker was so popular that even then-President Jimmy Carter called Mr. Wrestling #2 his favorite wrestler. Walker was invited to Carter's 1977 inauguration, but declined the invitation upon learning that he would have to unmask, feeling that removing the hood would damage his mysterious aura.

He did, however, accept a personal invitation from the President's mother, "Miss Lillian" Carter, to visit her at her home in Plains, Georgia. He arrived for the private visit with his mask.

"I always admired her for many reasons," Walker says of Lillian Carter, who passed away in 1983 at the age of 85. "She never, ever asked me to remove my mask. I respected that. We really enjoyed each other's company. She was a great lady. It was quite a treat spending time with her."

Walker can't speak for very long without the mention of a man who, for years, served as his bookend in the wrestling business. Rarely was there a Mr. Wrestling #2 without a Mr. Wrestling.

Tim Woods, his hooded predecessor, would play a big part in Walker's success. The two would form one of the top teams in the business during the '70s, drawing sellout crowds to Atlanta's Omni and throughout the Southeast for matches with such formidable teams as The Assassins and The Andersons.

"That's where our careers actually started. We had a lot of fun," says Walker. With Woods the top star in Georgia during the late '60s and early '70s, Walker would assume that title for the rest of the decade. With Woods, by then working with and without the mask, the two would draw major business as both partners and rivals, including a series of 12 consecutive sellouts at Atlanta's City Auditorium, culminating in a mask vs. hair match in which Woods had his head shaved.

Walker and Woods would become best friends as well as solid wrestling partners. "Timmy and I were extremely close," says Walker. "We never had a cross word with one another all the years that we were together. We got along better than brothers. He was a man that I looked up to and thought so much about. He also had a great sense of humor." Woods, says Walker, also was one of the smartest men he had ever met.

"I asked him one day, 'What the hell are you doing wrestling?' He said he loved it. And besides that he loved me too."

"I said that makes us even."

Woods, a three-time AAU national champion, died of a massive heart attack November 30, 2002, at his home in Charlotte at the age of 68. "Not only was he a great talent, he was a great man," says Walker.

Walker smiles when thinking of his friend, and shares a story that still makes him laugh to this day. "Timmy was very proud of his wrestling ability. And he should have been. I always told him he was the man when it came to wrestling," says Walker. "But one day I got him in the bathroom. I told him I would get down on my hands and knees, and I bet him that I could take him down. He laughed like hell."

It would be Walker, though, who would get the last laugh in this exchange of mat maneuvers. "I dropped down to my hands and knees, and he brought his leg up close to me," relates Walker. "I thought to myself, 'That's a mistake.' I reached over and grabbed him by his toe and I shot my elbow into his knee. I tipped him over and he fell into the latrine." The comical scene is still firmly etched in Walker's mind.

"See there, I'm going to tell all the boys that I dumped you into the latrine," Walker told the embarrassed Woods, laughing hysterically all the while. "Don't you dare! shot back Woods. "I wasn't expecting that."

All that amateur and college experience couldn't help him on that occasion, Walker chuckles. "But Timmy eventually laughed," says Walker.

"We really did have so much fun together. Our wives also got along great. We were very good together. I miss them all. I think about the good times that we used to have."

Walker's great partnership outside the squared circle was with his wife, Olivia, a talented seamstress who designed exquisite costumes and ring robes for such wrestling stars as Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes and Paul Orndorff, as well as for celebrities such as Dolly Parton, Porter Wagner and Liberace.

"She was not only a tremendous seamstress, she was a tremendous woman," says Walker. "She was the best woman you would ever want to meet. She was the love of my life and I think about her every day." The relationship lasted from 1962 until her passing in 2003.

"We hit it off for 43 years, brother," says Walker. "She was absolutely unreal ... it was wonderful."

Walker retired from the business not long after Vince McMahon's national expansion in the mid-'80s.

He makes his home in the town of Mililani, a bedroom community for Honolulu, with the mountains and the ocean as scenic backdrops. These days, says Walker, he's facing life's challenges as they come, taking things one day at a time.

"I kind of live day to day. It's tough sometimes, but you've got to do what you've got to do. The good Lord looks after me. He's been taking care of me pretty darn good."

-Mike Mooneyham, a writer and editor with Charleston's The Post and Courier since 1979, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on professional wrestling, and his weekly wrestling column has been in continuous publication longer than any other in the country.

I was at the event in 2010 when he suffered the heart attack. It's good to see him bouncing back. 2 is one of those guys, like Harley Race, who just has an aura and presence about him that led to me calling him "sir" without any thought about it. I need to go back and watch the DVDs from that year, because he did a Q&A session that I missed.

That's The Assassin, Jody Hamilton, who also wrestled as The Flame in the south, on the left.

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 13, 2013 10:08:13 GMT -5

Some of professional wrestling's younger fans might not remember Jerry Brisco beyond his role as a talent scout for WWE, or stretching back even further, as an on-camera "stooge" for outspoken boss and chairman Vince McMahon. But Brisco didn't exactly become a Hall-of-Famer for that part of his career portfolio.

Floyd Gerald "Jerry" Brisco, younger brother of the late NWA world champion Jack Brisco, was a top-tier performer in his own right for many years before joining WWE and eventually settling into an office position. April 9 will mark Brisco's 30th anniversary with the organization. "It's hard to believe. Anybody that can handle me for 30 years, and I can handle them for 30 years, somebody's obviously doing something right."

It's been a great ride with WWE, says Brisco, who nowadays scours the landscape in search of WWE's "next big thing." But it was in the Mid-Atlantic area where Brisco made his first big splash in the wrestling business.

That's one of the reasons he's excited about his guest appearance at this summer's Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest Weekend where, in addition to signing autographs and taking photos with fans, he'll also be observing and critiquing talent at a 4-day Future Legends Training Camp run by Tom Prichard.

This will be Brisco's third Fanfest, and he is eagerly looking forward to the event. "I absolutely love them. I've seen a lot of fan events across the country, but Fanfest is the best one that I've attended. Greg Price does a tremendous job organizing and putting on these events. He runs them in a very respectable manner."

One of the best things about the weekend, says Brisco, is that it gives him the opportunity to catch up with a number of former colleagues, many of whom he hasn't seen in years. "I enjoy coming up there because I get to see all the old guys that I haven't seen in a long time. I get to see the Paul Joneses, the Johnny Walkers, the guys that are still kicking. It's just a fun, enjoyable time for me."

Brisco, 66, also notes that the fans who attend the Charlotte event are among the most loyal he's ever been around. "I really enjoy meeting the fans who come to Fanfest," he says. "They come from all over the world, and the interaction is just phenomenal because they're so knowledgeable on the Mid-Atlantic area. They come up to me with memorabilia and posters from matches that I've totally forgotten about. It's like having flashbacks."

Brisco, who won numerous titles during a full-time in-ring career that spanned from 1968-85, followed brother Jack into amateur wrestling at Oklahoma State before leaving college to join the pro ranks.

Working the first few years of his career in the Mid-South territory, along with trips to Japan and Australia, Brisco arrived in the Carolinas in the summer of 1971 and never looked back. His first steady partner in the territory was veteran Sandy Scott. "Sandy was a dear friend. He taught me so much about the business," says Brisco. "He taught me how to be a pro, how to be political. I was a young punk and thought I knew it all."

Some heart-to-heart conversations, though, on those long road trips through the Carolinas proved to be very valuable for Brisco. "Sandy would talk to me the whole time about how to conduct myself and how to be a pro, and how to do it politically and how to get my points across. He taught me how to go to (promoter) Jim Crockett Sr. at the time and get things done."

Brisco admits that wasn't an easy thing to do in the beginning. The Mid-Atlantic office, like most during that era, was political in nature. "George Becker was the booker at the time, and for some reason George hated me," says Brisco. "I think George knew that I was coming in to replace him. I think he saw that I was some young buck with long hair and all that stuff ... some hippy kid from Oklahoma."

Still, Brisco says he never could understand why there was friction, since he feels he never did anything to alienate the veteran. "I really respected George because he was teaming up with Johnny Weaver, and I loved Johnny Weaver like a brother. Johnny felt the same way towards me, and we were good pals. But for some reason I could never get along with Becker."

Brisco enjoyed an entirely different relationship, though, with the owner of the territory. "Jim Crockett Sr. and I got along really well. And a lot of that was because of Sandy and Rip (Hawk) who helped me politically in the territory. It was really my first break in the business when you get right down to it. It was when I got my first opportunity to work on top and try to become a star."

Brisco, with his good looks and mat-based, scientific wrestling style, quickly became a fan favorite in the Mid-Atlantic area, and was soon adding titles to his collection. He held the Eastern States heavyweight title (the forerunner of the Mid-Atlantic title) on four occasions, swapping the belt back and forth with the veteran Hawk, and in 1973 teamed with Thunderbolt Patterson to win the Atlantic Coast tag-team belts from Gene and Ole Anderson.

"I don't know if we were the first, but T-Bolt and I were one of the first mixed tag teams with an African American and a white guy," says Brisco. "And that was in the Carolinas back in the early '70s when there was still a lot of racial stuff going on. It was challenging to say the least."

"Of course T-Bolt didn't back down from anything," adds Brisco. "He had that black El Dorado Cadillac, and we'd be going through some of those old Carolina towns and come up to these posters. T-Bolt would say, 'Hey, Brisco, look at that.' And the poster would say, 'Welcome to so and so, home of the KKK.' We kind of chuckled about it at the time."

In the ring, says Brisco, color didn't matter. It was all about wrestling. Good guys and bad guys. "As soon as T-Bolt would get in the ring and start wrestling, he was such a great babyface, and all the racial stuff was forgotten. Of course, there were great (heel) teams like Hawk and Hanson and the Andersons that we were competing against. But T-Bolt just became a wrestler during the match, and race wouldn't be involved. Going into town and leaving town was always very interesting."

As management and direction gradually changed in the Mid-Atlantic office, with George Scott taking over as booker, Brisco's fortunes only grew.

Wrestling historian Bill Murdock, who authored a book on Jack Brisco, says Jerry Brisco came into the territory at a pivotal time. "For George Scott to build the Mid-Atlantic area around Jerry was significant," says Murdock. "The territory was in a free fall. George could have picked anybody in the world to come here and build around, but he picked Jerry. He saw early on what all the wrestlers would see throughout the years."

Brisco would work in the Carolinas-Virginia territory until 1974, and would spend the rest of the decade wrestling in Florida - where his brother was based as NWA world champ - and Georgia. During that period Brisco enjoyed numerous runs as Florida, Georgia, Southern and North American tag-team champs with brother Jack, along with an array of singles belts that included Florida heavyweight, junior heavyweight and TV championships, NWA Southern heavyweight championship and NWA Southeastern heavyweight championship. In 1981, he reached perhaps the pinnacle of his solo success by winning the NWA world junior heavyweight championship, a title previously held by such greats as Danny Hodge and Hiro Matsuda.

In the early '80s, with both brothers contemplating retirement, Brisco had one more goal in mind. It remains his fondest memory from his Mid-Atlantic days.

"Holding the world tag-team championship belts with my brother was very special," says Brisco. It was something the brothers had actually planned early in their career. The Carolinas had always been a strong tag-team territory, and the Briscos wanted to end up their careers as a tag team. "We weren't really a solid, established tag team until later in our careers. Both of us were getting ready to retire. We said let's go to Carolina. We had never won a world tag-team title."

"It took a lot of conversations with Jimmy Crockett for him to approve," recalls Brisco. "Jack and I had been strong babyface draws for so many years. Jimmy didn't think it would work. But we assured him we weren't really going to change our wrestling styles. We were just going to be more aggressive."

"Of course we had the perfect foes in (Jay) Youngblood and (Ricky) Steamboat," he adds. "They had just come off that big run with Don Kerndodle and Sarge (Slaughter). We stepped right into it because they were still real hot from that."

Brisco says it took a little prodding to get their future opponents to agree with the plan. "It took probably a half dozen or more meetings, but finally we got Ricky and Jay to go in with us. They weren't sure it was going to work either."

They also were able to convince Crockett that the plan would work and do great business. "We finally convinced Jimmy, and he kind of put it in our hands. He said, 'You guys figure it out ... whatever you want to do we'll do.' So Jack and I kind of figured the whole program out, and what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. It turned out like gangbusters. It was very successful."

The switch from fan favorite to hated heel came subtly when Jack "accidentally" injured Steamboat's leg by falling on him while Steamboat was trapped in Jerry's figure four leglock. The fans blamed the Briscos for purposely injuring Steamboat despite the brothers' denials. "That turn was so great," recalls Murdock. "It worked to perfection."

The Briscos continued to bend the rules. An all-out war between the two teams broke out when the brothers swiped Youngblood's Indian headdress and claimed it for their own.

The Briscos achieved their goal when they won the world tag-team belts from Steamboat and Youngblood on two occasions during 1983 before losing them to the popular duo for the final time on a Thanksgiving Day show at the inaugural Starrcade in Greensboro, N.C., with "Big Nasty" Angelo Mosca as special ref. The bout was billed just below the NWA world title match between Ric Flair and Harley Race at the high-profile event.

The brothers weren't quite through, though, as they regained the belts the following year, this time taking the straps from Jay's younger brother, Mark Youngblood, and Wahoo McDaniel.

"I had so many great times in the Mid-Atlantic area," says Brisco. "I will never forget them."

Nor will he forget his first one-hour world heavyweight title match. "I wrestled Dory Funk Jr. at the Greensboro Coliseum on Thanksgiving 1970. We went to an hour draw. I was scared to death. I didn't think I could do it. But Dory led me through it, and we did it."

But the pinnacle, says Brisco, will always be sharing the world tag-team belts with his brother. "Jack told me that was the most fun he ever had," says Murdock. "He said he loved being (NWA world) champ, he loved those years, but he had more fun with Jerry."

The Briscos wound up their full-time, in-ring career less than a year after winning their final tag-team title, with Jack calling it quits for good.

There really wasn't much more for either to accomplish on the wrestling end. From three-time state high school champion to NCAA champion at Oklahoma State, to two-time NWA world champ in the pro ranks, Jack was regarded as one of the most talented pure wrestlers in the history of the sport. Nine years the junior of his brother, Jerry had more than proved himself in the ring, with a collection of titles to his credit. Together the brothers had racked up nearly two dozen reigns as tag-team champs.

Unlike many who had come before and many who came after, Jack Brisco was able to leave the business on his own terms, and never looked back. He was only 43 years old when he realized, in the midst of a late 1984 blizzard in Newark, New Jersey, and unable to feel his face or his hands, that he was physically - and mentally - ready to leave pro wrestling's long and grueling road behind. He decided then and there to cancel his future engagements, catch the next plane south and call it a career.

He never wrestled again. "I went home and thawed out," he would later joke.

The brothers had sold their interest in Georgia Championship Wrestling to McMahon earlier that year, allowing the WWE owner to become the majority shareholder and capture GCW's national cable television time slot on TBS.

With Jack out of the business for good, Jerry took a position behind the scenes as a road agent, and even made his way back to television in the late '90s when he and fellow associate Pat Patterson stood faithfully at McMahon's side as he battled the likes of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Brisco also stepped into the ring from time to time for comedy spots, even winning the WWE hardcore title twice in 2000.

Jack Brisco's passing in 2010 at the age of 68 left a major void in his brother's life. "I think about him all the time because I get asked about him all the time. I go to a lot of wrestling tournaments and run into some of these old coaches. They ask me about him. There's always a memory."

Brisco, who was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame along with his brother in 2008, says it really hits home when fans come up to him and talk about Jack, especially when they show him a poster or a photograph that his brother has personally signed. "I know his signature by sight, and when I see his picture, it just gets real emotional knowing that it was really him that signed that thing. I get emotional when I get to feel and touch something that he personally signed. That's when it hurts the most."

Jerry's son, TNA performer Wes Brisco, also was very close to his uncle. "He was a great man and an outstanding person to go along with it. He was such a mentor to Wes, and Wes has a Jack Brisco trading card in the dash of his truck that he keeps there all the time. Every time he gets in the truck, his uncle is there with him. That's kind of an emotional deal with him too. It's tough. Even after three years. We were together all of our lives."

He is especially proud of son Wes. "I'm really proud of him. He's working his butt off. He's a real student of the game. He'll make big time one of these days. We're just waiting for that day, but we know it'll come."

Brisco says Wes, who joined the TNA roster late last year, has been studying copious amounts of film in recent weeks in preparation for tonight's cage match with Kurt Angle at the company's Lockdown pay-per-view in San Antonio, Texas. "He's driving me crazy," laughs Brisco. "I've probably seen more cage matches in the last month watching film with him than I have in my entire career. He studied the heck out of the films."

Brisco signed a developmental contract with WWE in 2009, but a torn ACL derailed his stint. "He's really made some leaps and bounds since tearing two torn ACL's in a year that kind of cost him a spot with WWE. He got hurt two years in a row. I can't blame them. It's a profession. But he hooked up with the other organization, and he's doing fantastic with them. It is what it is. He'll get there."

These days Brisco stays busy on the road scouting potential talent for WWE. "That's really all I do now. I'm enjoying the heck out of it because I get to see a bunch of my old buddies in the sport that I grew up n and love. It's a pretty cool deal." This is Brisco's third year as a full-time scout and recruiter.

"I'm starting to get a good rapport with all the coaches because they know me and trust that I won't mess with their guys until they tell me to. A lot of them don't want you to talk to the guys early in the season. They want their focus on the mat and not what they're going to do later." Brisco says he fully understands - and respects - their position.

"When I first start looking at a guy, I'll go the coach and tell him I'm interested in that guy. I'll ask the coach when it's all right to talk to him. When I started recruiting Brock Lesnar as a junior, I went to his coach, J Robinson, who was one of my teammates at OSU. He told me not to say anything until he was through because he'd get easily distracted, and he wanted his focus one hundred percent for him." True to his word, says Brisco, Robinson delivered Lesnar at the appropriate time.

"He had him in his office and said, 'I've got Brock right here just like I told you.' The coaches are starting to trust me."

Brisco has been looking at talent for a number of years. Some of the performers he has helped recruit include Lesnar, Kurt Angle, Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas. And, going back much further, Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash.

In the 1970s, Jerry and brother Jack discovered Terry Bollea, a twenty-something blonde-haired muscleman who was playing bass guitar in a rock band at a local Tampa bar. Brisco arranged for the musician, who just happened to be a wrestling fan and frequented the Tampa armory on Tuesday nights to watch the Briscos wrestle, to meet with promoter Eddie Graham and trainer Hiro Matsuda the next morning. Bollea later changed his name to Hulk Hogan, and the rest is history.

"I've got a bunch of guys in Florida in developmental right now," says Brisco. "I've got another two in to report next month, and in June I've got seven guys coming in for tryouts. I've got a pretty good track record."

Brisco also has been a successful entrepreneur. He and brothers Jack and Bill established the Brisco Brothers Body Shop in Tampa 40 years ago, and their business has become one of the best-known body shops in the Southeast. "That's something we can't believe. I don't know how many wrestlers have been in an outside business for that many years and been successful at it. It's still doing good. We're loaded up with business, so it's worth the ride."

Brisco says he has fully recovered from a series of strokes he suffered several years ago. "I'm 100 percent. I've had an army of doctors, and all of them are telling me to keep doing what I'm doing. My weight's down around 200, my blood pressure and cholesterol are all normal. I feel great. I'm working out five days a week, and I've got the energy to work out five days a week."

"Jerry is one of the great gentlemen of this profession," says Murdock. "If you look up wrestling in the dictionary, you see Jerry's picture. He's the heart and soul of the sport."

-Mike Mooneyham, a writer and editor with Charleston's The Post and Courier since 1979, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on professional wrestling, and his weekly wrestling column has been in continuous publication longer than any other in the country.

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 14, 2013 10:14:58 GMT -5

From promoter Greg Price, an update on the Legends Training Camp:

Another exciting addition to this year's fanfest activities is Dr. Tom Prichard's Future Wrestling Legends Training Camp, a four-day talent search for the country's top young male and female wrestling hopefuls.

Prichard, a 30-year mat veteran and, since 1996, one of the most respected trainers in wrestling, will be joined by a bevy of legendary guest coaches including Les Thatcher, Jerry Brisco and Leilani Kai. More guest coaches will be announced over the coming months.

This is a very rare multi-day opportunity, providing more than 30 hours of in-ring training and locker room study. The benefit for the young wrestlers is almost 'once-in-a-lifetime.' It's a very rare opportunity to train with and have unprecedented access to so many wrestling legends at once and over multiple days.

Though the training camp is intended for experienced young wrestlers and referees, beginners and those with aspirations of possibly becoming a wrestler will have a chance to observe, as well.

There will be an hour each day when we open up the training camp to our fanfest VIPs for live exhibition matches, witnessing first-hand these young men and women chasing their dreams. But not only that, our fanfest VIPs will also play a part in the selection process, voting each day to see which talents may be selected to participate in the live wrestling cards on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

Are you a future wrestling legend? If that's your goal, don't miss this opportunity of a lifetime!

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 16, 2013 13:04:17 GMT -5

Tomorrow should see the announcement of a first time Fanfest guest. Until then, I thought I'd share another photo op from a previous event. This is another from 2009, and features a soon to be WWE Hall of Fame member:

I didn't ask him to put me in the hold, by the way. Before I could say, "Hi," he had grabbed me and the picture was taken. I'm not complaining, it's one of my favorite pics. I'm just glad he didn't crank up on it.

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 18, 2013 19:38:27 GMT -5

Tiger Conway Jr. never forgot the advice his father gave him. "Work is like taking care of a baby. You give it tender loving care. Don't hurt that baby, and remember that the baby's going to crawl before it talks or walks."

Tiger Conway Sr. was alluding to the wrestling profession, and his words of wisdom were absorbed by a son who would learn by example and eventually follow his dad into the business. Those words also would provide added impetus for Conway, a black man, to succeed in a business that was dominated by whites during a period when segregation wasn't a distant memory.

Conway was one of wrestling's young lions when he broke into the pro ranks during the early '70s. An athlete who could move like a cat and perform high-flying maneuvers effortlessly, Conway earned main-event status because of his ability in the ring and a strong connection to his fan base.

His father had been a longtime star in his home state of Texas, but young Conway had seen his dad scratch and claw to make a decent living for his family. As a youngster he recalled his father coming home off the road, sometimes bruised and battered from a grueling match earlier that evening. But before the morning sun had time to rise, his dad was back on the clock, working a second job putting up fences. "Everything was manual labor for my father. He was a very strong man," says Conway.

His strong work ethic and family values endeared the elder Conway to some of the most respected men in the wrestling business. "That's why I think guys like Lou Thesz, Luther Lindsay and Danny Hodge were his close friends. I never heard anybody in the business say anything bad about him," says Conway.

The youngster turned down athletic scholarships from several colleges, including the University of Nebraska, to pursue pro wrestling. And he was really good at it.

Several years into his pro career, he got the call from Mid-Atlantic booker George Scott, who knew Conway's dad and had seen Tiger Jr. begin his career in Houston while Scott was working in that territory. Conway made an immediate impact in the Carolinas, which had become one of the hottest areas in the country, and never looked back.

It's one of the reasons he's excited to be making a return as a featured guest at this summer's Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest August 1-4 in Charlotte. It will be Conway's first time ever at Fanfest, and he is eagerly looking forward to the occasion.

"I'm so happy to be making the event," he says. "I really wish I would have made the others, but I believe I'm happier at this time than ever before. I'm really looking forward to seeing all the fans."

Conway, 59, held the Mid-Atlantic tag-team title on two occasions - with Paul Jones in 1974 and the late Dino Bravo in 1977. But he also enjoyed Mid-Atlantic tag-team runs with other top performers such as Ronnie Garvin, Swede Hanson and Steve Keirn. "I had so many good times there with so many people," says Conway. "I am very thankful for the support I received all those years I was there. I think about those fans a lot."

Conway broke into the business in 1971 and hit the mat running. Within months of his pro debut in Houston, Conway found himself in India working against that country's claimant to the world title. From there he continued on a whirlwind tour that included stops in Kansas City and Atlanta.

Returning for another stint in his home state of Texas, Conway also found himself paying his dues and doing the honors for some of the territory's grizzled veterans. "I was putting over all the old-timers like Mike Paidousis and Gorilla Marconi. Those guys wouldn't let me do anything," he says.

For a young and athletic upstart like Conway, serving as enhancement talent was discouraging. "Those older guys would lock me down and hold me there for 20 minutes. I couldn't even get up to do any spots. And then they'd beat me."

The time would come, though, when Conway would not only be able to perform some of his athletic spots, but he'd execute them with near-flawless perfection. He also would remember what his dad had told him. "You must learn how to get over. But first, son, you must learn how to work."

George Scott had worked closely with Tiger Jr. at the time, and he knew what a talent Conway would become in good time.

Conway told all the promoters the same thing. "All I want to do is learn how to work. If you put me with these people I should learn something. Then you shouldn't have any problems."

"Guys like Lou Thesz, Jack Brisco and Danny Hodge would say the same thing," he adds. "But they knew I was Tiger's boy. They all let me know I was on my way."

Conway grew up in Houston, smack dab in the epicenter of a pro wrestling universe that consisted of such famous names and power brokers as the Von Erichs and the Blanchards. As a youth he remembers joking with some of his second-generation peers such as Tully Blanchard and the Von Erich boys. The difference, he notes, was that their fathers were promoters.

Blanchard, in particular, liked to spar with him in a game of one-upmanship. Tully's dad was longtime San Antonio promoter Joe Blanchard, so Tiger obviously had to concede. "Your dad doesn't have a territory" was Blanchard's usual retort, says Conway. "But that only motivates you to work harder to become what you are on your own. It was given to him."

There was no denying, though, that Conway's father had earned tremendous respect over the years as a loyal and hard-working hand. He may not have been a promoter, but those promoters had seen him pay more than his share of dues.

Plasee Dennis "Tiger" Conway was born in 1932 near Shreveport, La., the son of parents who lived on a plantation owned by an African-American. A pioneer who fought the racism that was prevalent in the South at the time, Conway began his wrestling career in a profession that allowed him to compete only in same-race matches, with some bouts promoted for the "World's Colored Championship."

Only as the remnants of segregation slowly dissolved would Tiger Conway Sr. be able to wrestle those outside his race. Billed in the '50s as the Texas Negro champion, he worked his way up the ladder as a top-flight performer and a wrestler to be respected - regardless of race. "Some of the wrestlers would stay at our house," recalls Tiger Jr. "It was funny to see my dad be so humble to the opposite race at the time of segregation as I was growing up."

Many other talented black wrestlers who lived in the area never got the chance. "They just quit. Some of them were my dad's friends. They were athletic, but they just couldn't make it while trying to support their families. They had to find a good job to take care of their families. "Some of them just had such a bad feeling about being pushed to the back because they could not wrestle the white guys. They were trying to do it ... they just didn't have enough power. They were licensed from day one by the state commission. I learned all of this, and it was drilled into me by so many wrestlers. And I learned that nothing was going to happen until a certain time." Conway knew that time would come. He just didn't know when.

Young Conway excelled in athletics at an early age. He played baseball, football and any other sport he could find available. The talented youth also was ambidexterous which, he laughs, would fool a lot of his wrestling opponents in later years. "I'd wrestle on one side and then go to the other. I was equally powerful on both sides."

While Conway laments that amateur wrestling wasn't offered in area schools at the time, he took on his share of would-be bullies who dared test the mettle of a pro wrestler's son. Conway jokes that he "drew a hell of a house" defending wrestling's honor in his neighborhood.

"They wanted me to show them. And I just really wanted to go home. But my dad told me to take care of myself, and then get back home. My mom would end up telling him that I had another fight ... that those kids were jumping on me again."

Word quickly spread that young Conway was more than holding his own. "Paul Boesch was gung-ho. They were telling him the stories. He was ready to book me the next week," laughs Conway.

Conway never missed a Friday night wrestling show at the Sam Houston Coliseum where Boesch promoted. He also traveled with his dad whenever he could get out of school. "We'd drive up to all of the towns and back to Houston where my dad had a fencing company," says Conway. "That was his dream. He made one fence owner a millionaire."

Conway's interest in pro wrestling only increased as he grew older. With his dad in the business, he had a veritable who's who of talented veterans to learn from. He absorbed things like a sponge. "I asked those other wrestlers that my dad trained and that he worked with. But every time I met with one of those guys, they'd headlock me. I thought I was ready to wrestle. But they'd tell me, 'Not yet kid.'" It was, as his dad would say, all about building blocks.

After coming off the football field or basketball court, says Conway, his father would take him to the local coliseum to see how the ring itself was erected. "It was all about the mechanics," says Conway, "and the tools that go with it."

And about the psychology of the business. "Building a person up and then tearing him down. And then going over for the finish. These were the things that it took to be a successful professional wrestler. That's what I carried. That's what I would later try to instill in the guys I worked with."

Conway vividly remembers arriving in Charleston for the first time. "The house was down. Johnny Valentine and myself brought it back up. But he just about beat me to death," Conway laughs.

"I'll also never forget the building (County Hall) or the promoter (Henry Marcus). What a promoter! I used to have so much fun with Mr. Marcus in the ring when he did the announcing. He would always pull his pants up, and we'd joke with him that what he needed to do was put all that money in the bank. He used to laugh at me every week. But what talent he had to deal with. We were quite a crew."

Conway, who arrived in the Carolinas in 1974, says he considers towns like Charleston and Charlotte his "second home." "It was unbelievable. The people there were just so nice to us. I felt very respected in the Carolinas."

Conway was one of the young lions back then. "I learned from everybody," he says.

Where the real learning took place, says Conway, was often outside the squared circle and on the long road trips that took the crew from one city to the next. "You learn the highway. You learn the road. It never changes. You do this every week. That's what it was, and that's how it was. But what an experience it was working and riding with guys like Paul Jones and Wahoo McDaniel, and on the other side Johnny Valentine and Super Destroyer. It was really something."

One of Conway's favorite programs was with a young Ric Flair. The Nature Boy, just a couple years removed from Verne Gagne's training school in Minnesota, was destined for greatness, and everyone knew it. But, like other relatively green hands, he still had to earn his stripes.

"I told Wahoo McDaniel that Flair was still learning," relates Conway. "I didn't have a clue what was going on, but I had heard the gossip because (Verne) Gagne and (Joe) Blanchard were friends. I think he came away too fast from his training when they were grooming him to be champion." As a result, says Conway, he and Wahoo came up with a plan to help indoctrinate Flair by giving him his first cauliflower ear. "I'm the one who started his cauliflower ear, and Wahoo's the one who finished it," laughs Conway. " I feel like I'm the one who helped him on his way, and he knows it."

Flair, says Conway, was a quick study. "Flair got it. Whenever he turned around, he was with a top worker. You can't go wrong that way. He was always ready to accept a challenge and step up."

Conway would enjoy a memorable run with Flair, and one that included heat-drawing promos from both sides. In one memorable interview designed to draw a big house at the next stop on the circuit, the brash and boastful Flair bellowed, "So this is how you pay me back, Tiger Conway Jr., even after I helped you get a job at the Waffle House in Charlotte!"

Conway chuckles at the fiery exchanges that went on between the two. "They were hilarious. But I really liked working with Ric because he knew how to settle down. Ric wanted to learn everything he could about the wrestling game, and he turned out to be a hell of a worker. He was one of the best. He was groomed well. He had it all. No one else got it the way he got it. They pushed him to the top."

As was the case with Flair, Conway was always more than willing to impart wrestling knowledge to those coming up the ranks. In fact, he saw it as a duty, much like he had observed veterans like Lou Thesz helping him and others learn the ropes. "The major satisfaction I got was that I gave something back," he says.

Conway was always there to pass on advice to those willing to learn. "If you had made that comeback last night five minutes earlier, this whole building would be redone next year," Conway recalled telling a promising rookie. He spoke from experience. He knew the kind of reaction a well-worked match could get along with some masterful storytelling in the ring. "I've seen people jump out of their seats and take bumps," he says.

"When Tom Prichard was a rookie, we tried to make him quit and think about something else. I wasn't the only one. There were Chavo Guerrero, Wahoo, Scott Casey, all of us. Magnum ran away for us, and we finally caught him. But we were building his body and mind."

"They were lucky to have us in that circle," he adds. "These guys turned out to be great workers in a short period of time. Whoever they gave to us, by the time they finished watching us, they were ready to set the stage on fire. I feel so good about being one of the boys who helped those guys finally make it."

Conway is not one to throw verbal jabs at anyone. "It doesn't help you or the other person," he acknowledges. But he can't deny that racism was a part of the business, and that management was a tough nut to crack during the territorial days. Some top talent, he admits, was overlooked. Some was favored over others.

"Top positions, top dollar, they got a shot at it. It (racism) played a big part because they (promoters) didn't trust ... they really didn't trust themselves. They went for all the deals, and then they changed all the deals."

Conway had seen many talented black wrestlers before him fight for their spot in the business. Luther Lindsay, who Lou Thesz called the greatest black wrestler ever, died at the age of 47 during a match at the Charlotte Park Center in 1972. Lindsay, like Conway's dad, had both spent time as Texas Negro champion.

Conway, who never got the opportunity to work with Lindsay, greatly admired the former intercollegiate wrestling champ and Golden Gloves boxer who had been an All-American guard at Hampton Institute in Virginia. "When I did get a chance to wrestle there (Charlotte), I prayed then that I would someday be as great as Luther had been." There always seemed to be a glass ceiling.

Conway, one of five children (three sisters and a brother who died at birth), reflects on the long and hard road his dad traveled to make a name for himself. Tiger Sr. had come off a plantation in Louisiana, where he shared a one-room sharecropper-style house with 10 brothers and sisters, with seven dollars in his pocket that he had earned from picking cotton.

Conway also recalls other black athletes "with necks like football helmets" who would work out with his dad by lifting railroad crossties as weights. "They had exceptional ability," says Conway, "but they never got the chance." His dad, who passed away in 2006 at the age of 74, instilled that same work ethic in him.

"The promoters knew it too. So many other black wrestlers before me had quit. But I'm not sure if they thought I would last that long. I could not let my mentors down. I could not let my father down. I could not let my family or myself down."

For Conway, the key was to listen and to learn. "I enjoyed the people I worked with no matter how the cards were dealt to me. I knew when to hold 'em and I knew when to fold 'em. The changes came at certain times around certain people. These guys knew each other very well. They knew how far to go. The new generation were the ones that you didn't know. You had to get to know and learn.

"It's not going to be me to talk about someone because I had great memories about this life. It wouldn't do me any good to talk about my brothers. I am not jealous of anyone. I know how I like to be treated and what I want. Sometimes it went the other way, but after being turned down so many times, sooner or later something works. God makes sure things work right - and wrong also."

For his dad, the son of a sharecropper, things definitely worked out. A number of real estate investments made him a millionaire, even though he never moved out of Houston's Fifth Ward. In 1995 the Texas Senate passed a resolution commending him on his wrestling career, calling him "a man of uncommon strength and talent."

Conway reflects on his days in the business, and prefers to think about the positive times and the colorful characters he met along the way. Unique individuals like Wahoo McDaniel. "Wahoo was so good. He was a real technician. He had great respect for me, and I appreciated that. He was an incredible individual. I really admired his record and his background."

Conway recalls a time in Lumberton, N.C., home of the Lumbee Indian tribe, when he and Wahoo had to "fight for our lives."

"Wahoo said he didn't think these people liked blacks or Indians," laughs Conway. "And they made sure they let us know. I thought it was bad, but Wahoo told me if I thought that was bad, I needed to be over there where (heels) Flair and Valentine were."

In addition to Mid-Atlantic tag-team title runs with Jones and Bravo, Conway held tag-team gold with a number of performers including Dusty Rhodes, Mr. Wrestling II, Mike Graham, Kerry Von Erich, Bull Ramos, Jose Lothario and Iceman Parsons. "I thank God I had such great partners," he says. "I really enjoyed working with Paul Jones. He was one of the best and a very good worker. I learned from our team."

Conway both teamed with and wrestled the late great Jack Brisco. "Wrestling Jack when he was champion was a thrill. We worked a 30-minute match on Raleigh TV. He beat me with 30 seconds left. It was up and down. I'll never forget it."

Conway even got the chance to work heel later in his career when he teamed with Pez Whatley as The Jive Tones. "It was something that Dusty (Rhodes) put together that I didn't think would work. I just didn't think the fans would buy that. But I really liked working heel. I knew if I was a heel, I was going to heat someone up. I wanted to be heel like Dick Slater. What a worker he was."

Conway also recalls memorable road trips he took with the late Andre The Giant while listening to R&B favorites such as The Temptations and Johnnie Taylor. "I love music. And I made Andre listen to music in my van. He would go to sleep listening to R&B. I had the stereo in his ear. But he liked it. He'd tell me, 'I am so mellow now.' I told him to listen for the beat."

Conway's high-flying and acrobatic moves earned him a legion of fans. He came up with his own signature spots, and also picked up a number of maneuvers from aerial artists such as Jose Lothario and Mil Mascaras. "I flew all over the ring. I just added some little things to those spots that were Tiger." Conway possessed such leaping ability that he was able to dropkick performers with razor-sharp precision. "I once dropkicked (Blackjack) Mulligan right in the mouth. They didn't know I could jump like that."

Conway says he learned to do back flips at swimming pools. "Not many blacks can swim. I know that because I had to save a lot of them," he laughs.

Conway recalls an incident at a pool involving Bob Roop, Bobby Shane, Bob Orton Jr. and himself. "Bob Orton was shooting with me in the pool while our wives were taking sun. And I'm fighting for my life. Orton is sitting on top of my head. Every time I come up he pushes me down because he thought I couldn't swim. But I showed him. I fooled him. We had some real fun back in those days."

Today Tiger Conway Jr. is a successful businessman and a proud father of five who has been married to the same woman for more than four decades. He says he fortunately heeded some sage advice from his father upon entering the mat ranks. Informing his son of the high divorce rate among pro wrestlers, Conway Sr., who was happily married for 56 years, advised: "Always remember this. Your family is all you're going to have one day. Family is so important. One day it's going to mean so much to you when you don't have them anymore."

"I didn't understand that at first," says Conway. "I learned that as we traveled down the road back and forth every day. I understand it real well now." Fortunately he was able to avoid the pitfalls along the way. He says he owes a lot of his success to his wife. "She gave me that power to do that. And I gave it back to her because she allowed me to wrestle. And now she's worked for 33 years since we came back from Charlotte in 1979-80."

Conway says his wife had attended the University of Houston as an accountant major, but she didn't get the degree because they got married her junior year. She later received her real estate broker's license from the women's wrestling great Penny Banner (Weaver). "My wife is smart. She got into this new industry (Automated Data Processing), she knew about it and she wasn't concerned about it because money was no problem."

Conway officially retired from the business in 1996, although the process had actually begun five years earlier. He did a number of overseas tours following runs with Mid-South/UWF and NWA/Crockett Promotions.

Then he got an offer from WWE owner Vince McMahon. But Conway realized he would be used as talent enhancement. He knew he would be putting younger stars over and eventually transition into a job as a road agent. He met with McMahon when WWE was in Houston for a Royal Rumble pay-per-view. He turned McMahon down, he says, because he wanted to be with his children. McMahon's response, however, surprised Conway.

"Vince gave me the greatest compliment. He said, "What a choice. I had no idea that you'd be telling me that.'" McMahon admired Conway for his stand, and it made the decision that much easier.

"There comes a time when you just have to sit back and regroup. Don't punt yet. Just take a knee." Conway, who will be 60 soon, now has two sons and three daughters, ranging in age from 19 to 43, along with seven grandchildren. His children are all athletic, he says. One of his boys, Neiko Conway, is a top defensive back at Midwestern State University in Houston.

Conway never pushed his kids to play sports, but they were all natural athletes. "I produced a lot of athletes. But no wrestlers."

He started his own fence and construction business 12 years ago. "All of my friends are successful ... in real life."

Conway says he's at a good place in life. "I'm more of a man than I ever was. I'm mature enough now to know about life. It's a great way to look at it."

The sprawling Afro that Conway sported in the '70s, by the way, is history. "I have a pony tail now that came after my knee operation. I asked my surgeon what he put in there. My hair used to just stick out. Now it's growing out the back of my head."

-Mike Mooneyham, a writer and editor with Charleston's The Post and Courier since 1979, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on professional wrestling, and his weekly wrestling column has been in continuous publication longer than any other in the country.

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 20, 2013 13:37:22 GMT -5

Thought I'd share a few more pics from prior events, just to show some more examples of the kind of opportunities available. All of these are from the 2009 event.

With "Cowboy" Bill Watts. I've heard a lot about his personality over the years. While I obviously wasn't working for him, he seemed fine to me. I got a copy of his book signed (which Molly Holly later borrowed long enough to flip through.)

Daffney is a cool chick, and even hotter in person. She was also there in '08, and I got a quick pic with her then while she was out of gimmick.

Harley Race, Ric Flair, and the actual NWA title belt as seen at Starrcade '83. They did a joint Q&A that weekend, and this photo op was offered after.

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 24, 2013 17:59:23 GMT -5

Most wrestling fans fondly remember James J. “J.J.” Dillon as the colorful manager and strategic leader of the famed Four Horsemen.

That elite unit, with Dillon at the helm, is universally regarded as one of the greatest factions in the history of the business.

Some fans might be surprised, however, to learn that Dillon had been an accomplished wrestler in his own right with an impressive resume.

Did you know that Dillon once defeated Mr. Wrestling No. 2 (Johnny Walker) for the Florida heavyweight championship and held the Florida tag-team title with Roger Kirby?

Or that he had the opportunity to don the tights inside “the Mecca of pro wrestling” — Madison Square Garden? “It was my one and only time. It was late in my career against Tito Santana,” Dillon recalls.

He had his first televised match in Pittsburgh against the great Killer Kowalski.

In fact, the mercurial manager took part in more than 3,200 professional matches during his career, and held a collection of impressive titles.

But Dillon actually broke into the business as neither a wrestler nor a manager, but as a referee who spent the first few years of his career officiating inside the squared circle.

He had dreamed of being a wrestler since the first time he watched the spectacle on his family’s black and white television.

“I was hooked,” says Dillon, whose early fandom included serving as president of the Johnny Valentine Fan Club back in the late ‘50s. “I realized he was great without really understanding why at the time because I was just a kid.”

Dillon went on to enjoy an illustrious career in the wrestling business that was highlighted by an induction into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2012. The honors will continue with Dillon’s induction into the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame in Amsterdam, N.Y., in May.

Another event that Dillon is excited about is the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest this summer in Charlotte.

Dillon will be on hand to induct an old buddy and partner, Les Thatcher, into the Hall of Heroes.

“He was right there in the beginning with me, and I always look forward to seeing him. I’m honored that he wanted me to do this,” says Dillon.

The two first crossed paths in the Carolinas during the early ‘70s, and Dillon credits Thatcher with teaching him the ropes.

“Les and I were tag partners. He taught me the right way to be a professional, and I never forgot that,” says Dillon. “We’ve remained friends over the years.”

Dillon points to Thatcher’s impressive track record in the business.

“Les has done it all, and he’s very respected. Look at the totality of his career. A great in-ring performer who did some bodybuilding, a great commentator, a great teacher and promoter. There’s no phase of the business that he hasn’t excelled in.”

Dillon, 70, is personally looking forward to the event for a number of reasons.

He admits there was a time in his life when he wondered what he had accomplished.

“I wasn’t a doctor, so I didn’t save lives. I didn’t discover a medicine that was going to cure cancer. I was a wrestler. And what did I do that was so special?”

Events like Fanfest, he says, provide the answer.

“You meet these fans and see the looks on their faces. Each of them has a specific memory that you were a part of. It gives me a tremendous sense of satisfaction knowing that when it was all said and done, that I touched the lives of so many people. In doing so, I had accomplished something with my life. That’s what Fanfest means to me.”

Dillon, who has missed only two Fanfests since its inception in 2004, says he enjoys the event as much, if not more, than the thousands of fans who attend the annual gathering.

“Whatever I give in terms of time and being there, I take away much more than I give. It means every bit as much to me — as someone who made a living in the profession — as it does to the fans who come there. It’s a win-win situation, and that’s why I look forward to going as often as I do.”

In a way, says Dillon, he’s making up for those many years when wrestlers were members of a closed society and were insulated from fans.

“We came in the back door and had no interaction with them unless we stopped at a convenience store and somebody at the matches also happened to pull in there. Other than that, they didn’t meet you and knew nothing about you.”

Nowadays, he says, he enjoys the camaraderie and wouldn’t think of missing the event.

“It’s amazing the things people bring to you to sign that they’ve kept for all these years. I’m especially looking forward to this year since there was a hiatus last year. I have very good feelings that this year will be spectacular, and I’m happy to be a part of it. And I’m thrilled to be there to induct Les.”

Dillon is grateful for all of the experiences he has had through the years.

“I had a storybook career. When opportunity presents itself, you have to seize it. I certainly had the desire and the passion, and I had the luck to be in the right place at the right time.”‘Wrestling was my dream’

J.J. Dillon, real name Jim Morrison, looks back on his career with fond memories.

Spanning several generations of pro wrestling, he has enjoyed a birds-eye view of the many changes that have occurred over the past half century.

In addition to being a referee, wrestler and “Manager of Champions,” he held key office positions in both WWE, where he worked closely with Vince McMahon, and later WCW, where he watched that company’s monumental collapse.

Dillon discovered wrestling as a teenager growing up in Trenton, N.J.

“Television was still in black and white,” says Dillon, who saw Argentina Rocca wrestle Karl Von Hess in his first live match.

The youngster never looked back.

“Some kids want to join the circus or be a cowboy. Wrestling was my dream. I don’t think anybody took me seriously, but I hung around.”

Dillon faithfully attended all the local matches, selling programs and handling the wrestlers’ robes and ring jackets so he wouldn’t have to buy a ticket.

Then, through a quirk of fate, it happened. One night a referee didn’t show because of a snowstorm, and Dillon was called into action.

He was a natural in the position and became a regular official for WWE (then WWWF) while attending college.

“I ended up being a referee and did that for eight years on a part-time basis,” he says.

Dillon, who was never formally trained, had met and become friends with The Zebra Kid (George Bollas) during the late 1950s. The youngster told Bollas that wrestling was his dream and asked for advice.

Bollas, a top-ranked pro who had been an All-American wrestler at Ohio State, told Dillon two things.

“First of all, get your education. Go to college and get your diploma. You can stuff it in your back pocket. It may be something you never use. But it will always be there for you to fall back on, and if you’re serious about wrestling, wrestling will always be there.

“Secondly, learn amateur wrestling. The basic fundamentals apply and will serve you well as a professional.”

“I went to college and went out for the wrestling team. I wasn’t very good, but it was a small college (Albright College in Reading, Pa.) and I was on the team and learned the fundamentals of amateur wrestling,” says Dillon.

Dillon was married and a new father shortly after getting out of college.

“You have this wonderful life planned. It sometimes doesn’t turn out as simple as you think,” he says.

Dillon began his part-time job as a referee in 1962. He even worked a couple of unofficial matches that same year at a show headlined by Miguel Perez against Hans Schmidt. Dillon used the name Jim Valance — in honor of Johnny Valentine — and had a return match a month later.

Dillon got a career break when he was approached by The Sheik (Ed Farhat) and offered a job as a wrestler in Sheik’s Detroit-based territory.

“The Sheik said I could put the tights on. That had always been my dream.”

Dillon’s first sanctioned match was in 1968 in Dayton, Ohio, inside a tin shed that was so small that the ring only had room for chairs on two sides and a couple of rows for fans. He competed in a tag-team match with Ron Sanders against The Hell’s Angels. The commentator, he remembers, was the great Ernie Roth (aka The Grand Wizard).

Dillon jumped into his car and headed for Pittsburgh for a televised match the next day. It would be his first sanctioned match on TV, and his opponent would be Killer Kowalski.

“How many people can say they had their first singles match against Killer Kowalski?”

Dillon already had been working part-time on weekends for Bruno Sammartino, who had been helping promote shows in his hometown of Pittsburgh, and learning the ropes while officiating many of the Italian strongman’s championship matches.

Dillon was working in a management training program for a trucking company in Niles, Ohio, about 90 miles from Cleveland, when he contacted Sammartino.

“I had learned the basic knowledge of wrestling from being the third man in the ring for so many of his championship matches. I got a hold of Bruno and went down to a show at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. Bruno told Ace Freeman that he wanted him to start me the next weekend even if he had to add a match to the card. I stayed there for a year.”

It was there that he met Ohio-based journeyman Jim Grabmire, who knew of Dillon’s dream to break into the wrestling side of the business. Grabmire worked primarily in his home base during the winter, but would travel to promoter Jim Crockett Sr.’s Charlotte territory in the summer to help beef up that area’s sizable roster.

Grabmire took one of Dillon’s publicity photos to Crockett and, based on the veteran’s word, Dillon got the job.Mid-Atlantic memories

Leaving behind his jobs teaching school and selling insurance, Dillon was on his way to achieving his childhood dream.

“I packed up everything I owned in an old, beat-up Chevy,” says Dillon. “I had never been south of Richmond, Va., in my life. I drove to Charlotte where you could have a room for 15 bucks. It was right up the street from Crockett Sr.’s office.”

Dillon immediately was thrown into the fire, as his first match in the territory was against the rugged Gene Anderson.

Dillon, working as a babyface, made a favorable impression with his new bosses.

“That first night they were looking for a five- or six-minute match with Gene Anderson. It ended up about an 18-minute match. The referee later came over and had a big smile on his face. Gene had gone back to the dressing room and said, ‘This kid’s got something. You want to keep booking him.’”

Dillon credits Thatcher with helping him during those early days.

“Les was in the territory at the time. He was a couple years older than I was but obviously had more experience. He kind of took me under his wing. Les was the guy that taught me how to conduct myself like a professional. I showed my lack of maturity on more than one occasion, and Les kind of straightened me out. We’ve been friends ever since, and that was 1971.”

Dillon says the opportunity to hone his craft in such a highly regarded territory was the experience of a lifetime and the real beginning of a dream that was about to come true.

“I was just thrilled to be booked. I was several months short of my 29th birthday. At that point I wasn’t a kid.”

His maturity level, he says, helped him initially.

“My whole attitude was different. I had a respect for the business. I kept my mouth shut. Those days there were no shortcuts to getting into the business. You didn’t have any schools. Most of the old-timers were reluctant to help a young guy because they looked at you as a threat who might take their place.”

Dillon, however, earned the respect of the territory’s veterans and proved to be a steady hand in that area for more than two years.

“Johnny Weaver was working in the office, and he and George Becker were the top team. I was like a sponge. There was a nucleus of guys that really helped me out. Johnny was a huge, huge help to me, as were guys like Art Nelson and Ole Anderson. I’ve been a friend of Ole’s since that time. Everybody thinks of him as being old and miserable, but I just understood him. We got along, and we’ve been friends to this day.”Learning the ropes

Jim Dillon would make many several more stops as a wrestler before his transformation to J.J. Dillon the manager.

Dillon became such a reliable hand in the Carolinas that Weaver suggested him for a rare TV match with then NWA world champion Dory Funk Jr. It was a set-up bout for Weaver, who at the time was the territory’s top challenger for Funk’s crown, but Dillon was impressive in his loss. He even got another crack at Funk on a show in Norfolk, Va.

“Of course I have to admit that the other featured match was Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson with Homer O’Dell against Thunderbolt Patterson and Jerry Brisco,” Dillon laughs. “They sold the tickets, but I was listed as the co-main event because it was a world title match.”

Unfortunately, three nights earlier in Greenville, Dillon severely sprained his ankle while working a tag-team match against Gene and Ole Anderson.

“The next day I was in a tag-team match with Les in Raleigh. Les told me to go down to the ring with him and put one hand on his shoulder, and try and hold the tag rope, and he’d take care of the rest. That was the mindset back in those days because if you didn’t work, you didn’t get paid, The guys helped each other.”

By Thursday, the night of the world title match, the swelling had gone down a little, but Dillon was at best 60 percent.

“To show what a great champion he was, he managed to get a credible match out of a crippled young guy in his first territory,” Dillon says of Funk.

Dillon recalls marveling at the classic series of world title matches during that time between Funk and Jack Brisco.

“I remember being on early and going out and sitting up in the bleachers in the back, and for one hour just watching. You could learn so much just by watching two masters of their craft.”

The newcomer was a true student of the game, and the Mid-Atlantic power brokers were taking notice.

When Weaver had to cancel a summer tour working for the Cormier brothers in their Nova Scotia-based Eastern Sports Association, Dillon got the call.

“Johnny Weaver would go up there periodically, and they’d bring him in as an attraction. At the end of that season, Weaver was supposed to go up there. But somebody got hurt, and he had to stay. He told Crockett Sr. he wanted to send me up there in his place.”

Dillon, though, had little money to make such a trip. Seeing Dillon’s predicament, Weaver suggested he talk to the veteran promoter.

“It was $620 for a plane flight from Charlotte to Halifax. I would have loved to go, but there was no way I could afford it,” says Dillon.

Dillon took Weaver’s advice and paid a visit to Crockett. Problem solved.

“Jim Sr. reached in his pocket, pulled out some cash, counted out $620, slid it over to me, and told me to get that ticket and go up there and they’d reimburse me. And when I got back, he told me to come and see him.”

When Dillon returned to Charlotte, he gave Crockett the $620 that had been reimbursed to him by the Cormiers. Crockett told him, “You will always have a home here. And you can come back and stay as long as you want.” The venerable promoter, however, would pass away during Dillon’s next season working in Canada.

Dillon made such an impression on the Cormier brothers that they invited him back for the next tour.

“They wanted me to be featured with Freddie Sweetan, who lived up there, and give him a fresh partner.”

Dillon, now billed as “Nature Boy”Dillon, would get his chance to work as the territory’s top heel.

“They did everything to get me over. There was no backup ... there was no plan B. You either got it done or you didn’t. The idea was that I used a chain out of my tights and knocked out The Beast (Yvon Cormier) to take the title. Then I wrestled Leo Burke (Cormier) in a cage match for the (North American heavyweight) title. You had the same match every night for six or seven nights. I don’t think we went quite the hour in the cage, but for five or six of them I lost about 20 pounds. It was one of their hottest summers.”

Dillon also would team with Sweetan to take the territory’s International tag-team title from The Beast and Bobby Kay (Romeo Cormier).

Dillon got over so much that the Funks invited him to West Texas.

“It seemed like the other side of the world to me, but I had always dreamed of going to Japan, and they had the deal with Baba, so I went and stayed in Amarillo for over a year and had an unbelievable run with Dick Murdoch. Being around the Funks, Ricky Romero, Cyclone Negro and Killer Karl Kox was a great experience. I also got two trips out of Japan.”

Dillon, who briefly held the Western States title after defeating Kox, followed his Amarillo run with a stint in Florida working for Eddie Graham.

“Wrestling in Florida also was a dream because I had seen Dr. Jerry and Eddie Graham at the Garden as a kid, and I knew what Eddie had done in Florida. For a chance to there and be around him was great.”

Dillon hooked up in the Sunshine State with The Stomper (Archie Gouldie), whom he had met in Canada working for the Cormiers, and the two teamed up on a few small shows. Several months after Stomper left Florida, Dillon got a call asking him to go to Texas and be his manager.

Dillon had never managed before, but Stomper was confident that Dillon’s gift of gab could get him over in the Dallas territory.

“I said one door in life closes behind you and another one opens in front of you, so let’s do it,” Dillon recalls. “I left and went to Dallas in the latter part of 1975, started my managerial career and never looked back.”

Along with his experience working in the Maritimes, he was slowly but surely becoming a complete, well-rounded performer who could work heel as well, if not better, than babyface.

Working for promoter Dory Funk Sr. in Amarillo and promoter Eddie Graham in Florida, the villainous Jim Dillon would emerge as a bad guy the fans loved to hate.

“The Maritimes were special because I got a break so early in my career. Amarillo because the trips were long but the talent and being there with the Funks and the trips to Japan. And Florida because Eddie Graham had such an impact on me and just being around him.”The Four Horsemen

Without doubt, the Jim Dillon most fans remember was the pompous, tuxedo-wearing James J. “J.J.” Dillon who managed the original Four Horsemen — Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson and Tully Blanchard, and later, Lex Luger, Barry Windham and others — during the mid-’80s.

His stint as leader of The Horsemen was the pinnacle of his career.

The infamous stable evolved from an interview. Dillon was managing National champion Blanchard, and they were joined by NWA world champ Flair and NWA world tag-team champs Arn and Ole Anderson.

“Take a good look at your screen right now, because never have so few wreaked so much havoc on everyone else. You’d have to go back in history to the four horsemen of the apocalypse,” Arn declared during an interview. Dillon then held up the four fingers on his right hand, mimicking Anderson’s hand gesture, which would quickly become one of the most recognizable symbols in all of wrestling.

“It just grew and grew from there,” he says.

Dillon says he will never forget the series of classic War Games matches involving the Horsemen in 1987.

“It was two rings together with a cage around the whole thing. It was so violent that the first one at the Omni on July Fourth set the tone for the others doing so well.”

That bloody, five-on-five match that could only end on a submission saw Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff, The Road Warriors and Paul Ellering defeat Flair, Arn Anderson, Blanchard, Lex Luger and Dillon.

As the heel manager, Dillon was the “sacrificial lamb.”

A not-so-textbook Doomsday Device finishing move, with Hawk coming off the top and Dillon precariously perched on Animal’s shoulders, resulted in Dillon suffering a separated shoulder.

“It didn’t break it, but I was off six weeks. I still have hump up in my collarbone. They said that night that I could have surgery to fix it, or I could have it immobilized for six weeks and it would heal but I’d always be able to see it in the mirror.”

The pain, he says, was worth the memories of that special time.

“Without a doubt the Horsemen run was the pinnacle of my career.”

And when that run ended, another different one was about to begin.

Blanchard, who along with Anderson had taken a job in WWE, gave Dillon a call.

“Tully said that they were running three towns a night up there (WWE), and all of the matchmaking and booking was being done by Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson. And they needed help.”

Blanchard told Dillon that his name was being mentioned, and wondered if he might be interested.

Dillon knew that he might be working on borrowed time. TV mogul Ted Turner was in the process of purchasing Jim Crockett Promotions.

“That was right as the transition was taking place to Turner. My contract had expired. (Jim) Barnett was pressing the issue, but I always managed to avoid the subject.”

Dillon decided to make the trip to New York and listen to the offer. McMahon sent a car to Manhattan, and the two met at the WWE owner’s home.

“He said that we’d keep it quiet, and that if I wanted to use this as a means to getting a better deal for myself down there, he understood. But he offered me a job and said he hoped I’d take it on that basis.”

Dillon, 46 years old at the time, didn’t have to think too long or too hard.

“How many more special matches could I have with Paul Ellering? I got crippled up pretty good in that first War Games match. It was the worst injury I had ever had. I knew it had to end sometime.”

In a way, says Dillon, it had all come full circle. He had started with Vince McMahon Sr. as a referee in the early ‘60s, and now, nearly 30 years later, he was returning to work for his son.

In 1989, Dillon began his new job as Vice President of Talent Relations. For the next eight years, he would enjoy a successful run as a major behind-the-scenes player. The Undertaker and Triple H were among those hired during his tenure.

After his front-office stint with WWE ended, Dillon again joined World Championship Wrestling, taking an office job behind the scenes and playing an on-camera role as WCW Commissioner.WWE Hall of Fame

There’s another moment in Dillon’s illustrious career that he will never forget.

Dillon’s induction last year into the WWE Hall of Fame was a tremendous honor, but at the same time represented a huge burden that was lifted off his shoulders.

Dillon, who had parted ways with WWE under less-than-favorable terms, had no idea that he would ever be invited back into the fold. But last year at a show in New Jersey, Dillon made it a point to speak to former Horseman Barry Windham.

Windham, son of WWE Hall of Famer Blackjack Mulligan (Bob Windham), confided that WWE had plans to induct the Horsemen later that year.

“I didn’t see it coming. It floored me. But I couldn’t tell anybody,” says Dillon, who was sworn to secrecy.

Several weeks later Windham suffered a massive heart attack and stroke.

Dillon wondered if those Hall of Fame plans might be altered.

“Knowing how the nature of the business is, what seemed like a good idea today is not a good idea tomorrow. With Barry’s health in question, who knows?”

Dillon will never forget the day he got the call.

He had picked his daughter up from college to do some shopping for winter clothes when his cell phone rang. It was from WWE.

“(WWE Talent Relations Vice President) John Laurinaitis said it was happening. They would fly me and my guests to the Hall of Fame. I was stunned.”

Time passed before he would hear from WWE again, and Dillon admits he did some major sweating, not knowing if the company might have scrapped the plan.

He recalls watching Raw on a Monday night when he got another call from Laurinaitis.

I’m here (in San Antonio) for live Raw, and I want you to know we’re making the announcement tonight,” said the WWE executive. “We’ve got a package, and it’s very well done, and we’ll send you a copy of it.”

Dillon’s voice cracks with emotion when he thinks about that moment.

“I thought, if it happens tonight, it’s real.”

About 30 minutes into the show, Dillon recalls, an announcement was made about an upcoming Hall of Fame reveal.

“They come out of commercial, and they announce Edge.”

Dillon’s heart sank.

“I’m sitting there stunned.”

Later, though, they would plug a second Hall of Fame announcement.

“It was about 25 minutes after 10 going into a break,” he says. Then, to his relief, the announcement was made. The Four Horsemen (Flair, Blanchard, Arn Anderson and Windham) — manager J.J. Dillon included — were in.

“There it was. I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ I remember waking up the next morning after a sound sleep and wondering if that really happened or was that something I dreamed.”

Dillon was unsure if Flair, who was under contract with TNA at the time, would be allowed to make the ceremony. But a phone call to the Nature Boy answered that question.

“When I called Ric, he said, ‘Before you ask me the question, I’m going to give you the answer. Hell, yeah, buddy. And I’m going to be up on stage with you.’”

“Ric was the first person inducted into their Hall of Fame twice,” says Dillon. “There would have been a time when it was unheard of to induct somebody working under contract for another company.”

Dillon now looks forward to old friend Bruno Sammartino finally being inducted in two weeks.

“I’m glad it worked out for Bruno to be inducted because he’s been special to me for 50 years. It’s added credibility to their Hall whether they ever have a building or not.”

Dillon recalls meeting with Sammartino in Toronto shortly after his induction last year.

“I met privately with Bruno and told him I didn’t want him to think that because I was gracious about this honor that somehow I had compromised my principles. I knew how strongly he felt. He put my mind at ease and told me he fully understood. He was happy for me. And then I felt relieved.”

Dillon says he sent a message to Sammartino earlier this year congratulating him on his long-awaited induction.

“When the word was out that they were talking to Bruno, I called to congratulate him. I was probably one of about a hundred calls. Two days later he left a message at work apologizing for not calling me right back, and told me he never backed down. They (WWE) had to make things right, and they did.

“How could they have a Hall of Fame at Madison Square Garden without Bruno? I don’t have a ticket yet, but I would like to go to the Hall of Fame to share that moment. Putting him and (Bob) Backlund in is giving them a step forward. You’re starting to see some of the influence of Triple H’s transition.”Still going strong

Three months shy of 71, Dillon hasn’t slowed down much.

He still works full-time, and has been employed by the Delaware Department of Corrections for nine years.

“I went through the academy like everyone else. It’s funny because no one knew who I was at that point. There were 35 in the class. I was 61 and the next-oldest was 47, and then were a couple who weren’t even 20 yet. It wasn’t until we did a walk through the prison that the prisoners did a double take and recognized me.”

Like most of his colleagues in the wrestling business, his home life hasn’t always been stable.

“Married three times, divorced three times,” he says.

Dillon moved to Delaware at the age of 61 after his third divorce 10 years ago. His father had just passed away and his mother, who was in her late 80s at the time, was living alone in a small, two-bedroom home.

He had worked for Jerry Jarrett for two years in the real estate business following the closing of WCW, so the timing was right, he says.

“It was a stopping off point,” he says. After his mother passed away of complications from a stroke at the age of 92, he and his sister sold the house, and he moved into a condominium only five miles from his job.

“The cost of living is reasonable here. It’s a small state with no sales tax. At this point I’ve got an apartment that was just built. I’ve been so fortunate my entire lifetime. And my luck has continued.”

The location, he adds, keeps him close to a pair of 20-year-old twins that attend the University of Delaware.

He was 50 years old when the twins came along, and 52 when his next child was born. He also has a 46-year-old daughter from his first marriage. His four granddaughters are 22, 21, 18 and 5.

His second wife was five years older than Dillon and had three children of her own.

“Her being a little older, the thinking was that I would have never have more children, so I got a vasectomy in Amarillo. I was married to her 17 years,” says Dillon.

“My last wife was 13 years younger and wanted children. Eleven years after I had the surgery, I went back to Amarillo and had the same doctor reverse it. Two years later, with a little help from fertility, I had kids. After that, I didn’t think anything about it, But as I was ready to go to Japan, my wife tested positive. I refer to my youngest one as my little miracle.”A new chapter

J.J. Dillon now lives life one day at a time. He still gets emotional when talking about his many friends in the business who have passed away.

It’s one of the main reasons he goes to events like Fanfest, the annual Cauliflower Alley gathering and the Gulf Coast Legends Reunion.

“It really affects me,” says Dillon. “It’s really hits home when a guy like Bill Moody (aka Paul Bearer) leaves us. I tell my kids that you have to live each day to its fullest.”

Dillon thinks about the thin line between life and death, and the risks that wrestlers take each and every time they step into the ring.

While wrestling can be one of the most exciting professions in the world, it often comes with a price.

“I can remember years ago when Ric (Flair) would go to the ring. In the corner I’d take his jacket, and he’d have a little piece of paper that he would hand to me. He’d say there’s a phone number or something on here where he’d have pictures of his kids that were in his wallet that he’d look at. And that was the last thing before he went to the ring. And that was 25 years ago. But it was in his mind even back then.”

Dillon thinks about the time he missed with his own children.

“When she (his twin daughter) first came up here to go to school, she would spend some time here. Half of her life I wasn’t there. It was a phone call or a card. I would fly down there for a short visit. We would go to dinner or go shopping, and I’d be back on a plane home.”

Things are different now.

“Every day when I talk to her, I tell her I love her. You can’t make them love you, but you can try to be the best parent you can be. And it reaches the point where if you’ve done everything right, then you hope things work out.”

His children, he says, help keep him young at heart.

“When they were born, I was walking around with my chest puffed out. I was pretty proud of myself. Especially when I had another one two years later. She’s with her mother in Atlanta, and she graduates in May from Woodward Academy. But I’ve slowed down in these past nine or 10 years. I’ve been very, very fortunate health wise. All the vitals are good.”

Dillon, whose last official match was in 1989, says he was fortunate that he didn’t suffer any serious injuries during his days in the wrestling business.

He and Terry Funk had their knees replaced on the same day five years ago.

“I had my left knee done in Delaware. He had his right knee done in Amarillo. Every day we called each other and checked on our rehab. We were very supportive of each other.”

A year later Dillon was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

“It was caught very, very early. I’m cancer-free now. The doctors keep telling me that the one thing I’ve got in my favor is good genes. My father was 85 when he died of congestive heart failure. My mother was 92. That’s something that you can’t buy.”

Dillon, whose 2005 autobiography “Wrestlers Are Like Seagulls: From McMahon to McMahon” chronicles his colorful life in the business. will be inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame on May 18. He calls it the most prestigious honor of all.

“It is an honor in itself just to have your name appear on the ballot for consideration for the Hall of Fame. This recognition is so special because I have been selected by vote of a panel of respected wrestling historians, along with a group of my peers, which included many prior inductees.”

Dillon, the recipient of several Manager of the Year awards, has earned the respect of his peers through hard work and a burning desire to succeed.

“I always say that I was never the biggest and never the best. I didn’t have a Hulk Hogan/Ultimate Warrior/Superstar Graham type of body. I hated going to the gym to work out. I just was at the right place at the right time. I wasn’t the biggest or the best, but nobody wanted it more than I did. You have to have desire and determination. There are always going to be setbacks along the way, and if you want it bad enough, you can get it.”

From referee to wrestler, from manager to front office, and now elder statesman, there isn’t much that Jim Dillon hasn’t done or hasn’t accomplished in the wrestling business.

“For me, at this stage of my life, I am so grateful for all the good things that have happened to me. As for the changes, change happens with everything. Change is not always for the better. But change is inevitable. And one thing that doesn’t change is the memories. I see them with the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, I see them with the Cauliflower Alley, I see them in Mobile (Gulf Coast reunion) and I see them with Greg Price and Fanfest. Those are our memories. The memories don’t change.”

JJ Dillon simply exudes class. I know I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record, but as mentioned in the article above, you can tell that JJ loves the weekends, seeing old friends and colleagues, and talking with the fans. During the '09 weekend, when they did the Horsemen reunions, it was an all day thing for them. There were 3 different group photo ops offered, plus various pairings of the members, plus their time on the autograph stage. It literally went into overtime, and you could tell all the guys were getting tired. Even then, JJ was nothing but class, and honestly seemed more concerned about how Ole, in a wheelchair with MS, was holding up.

I've got a few photo ops involving JJ, but this is the original, from my first Fanfest in 2008:

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Apr 2, 2013 13:48:03 GMT -5

Bob Caudle, the longtime “Voice of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling,” is the latest guest to be announced for the 2013 Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest to be held Aug. 1-4 in Charlotte.

Caudle’s easygoing, straightforward approach at the announce desk made him one of Mid-Atlantic wrestling’s most beloved figures.

Caudle was a staple of wrestling in the Carolinas during the ‘60s and ‘70s and its fans who religiously tuned in each Saturday afternoon for their weekly dose of TV grappling.

For years the affable broadcaster served as lone commentator for the show that was taped on Wednesday nights at the WRAL-TV studio in Raleigh where he also worked as an on-air personality doing the news and weather.

“I guess most old people are like me. We like to think back a lot and reminisce about when things were good. And those, to me, were really good times. They were the best,” says Caudle, who will turn 83 during Fanfest weekend.

Caudle, who has missed only two Fanfest events, says he loves attending the annual reunion.

“It’s a wonderful event. I don’t see how Greg (Price) does it each year, but he does a great job.”

An inaugural inductee into the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Hall of Heroes in 2007, Caudle says he is amazed — and humbled — by the response he receives at the event.

“Even older people will come up to me at Fanfest and say they grew up watching me. A lot of younger people also come up and ask for an autograph. It’s amazing to me since they’re so young. They have to be seeing what we did back then somewhere.”

The biggest kick, he says, is reuniting with many of the performers whose matches he called those many years ago.

“I really love seeing the guys again. If it wasn’t for this (Fanfest), I might never see any of them again. I think about all the guys I saw and how glad I was to see them. I saw Rip Hawk and talked about old times. And then I think about guys like Johnny Weaver and Sandy Scott and Gene Anderson and all the guys that I miss.”

Caudle says he even talks to Ole Anderson.

“I talk to Ole every now and then. Ole calls me once in a while. We just talk about old times. Ole doesn’t care about anything going on nowadays. But that’s another thing. When you think back to 1960, many of these guys are up in age as well. I’m seeing these older guys, and we go back so many years. It just brings back many fond memories.”All-star sidekicks

Caudle began announcing for Crockett Promotions in 1960 when they began taping matches at the WRAL-TV studio in Raleigh.

“We taped two shows simultaneously using different audio. Nick Pond did the one that ran on Raleigh TV. The Murnicks asked me if I’d try it, and I did the one they sort of bicycled around the territory. That’s the way we first started out doing it. We did that for a long time.”

Caudle continued to do TV for the Crocketts when they moved production to WPCQ in Charlotte and then took the production out to the arenas.

“Eventually the Crocketts got their own mobile truck, and we started taping at different arenas,” says Caudle.

One of his favorite co-hosts was an announcer he worked with in Jim Cornette’s Smoky Mountain Wrestling promotion in the early ‘90s.

“Dirty Dutch Mantel was more fun to work with than you can imagine,” says Caudle. “That was just a lark. I enjoyed that so much. We worked together for two or three years. But I never got to work with him in Mid-Atlantic.”

Most of the individuals he worked with during his Crockett/Mid-Atlantic days played it straight down the middle.

“It was just a lot different back then. I worked with David Crockett for a long time. He was the most excitable of the group,” laughs Caudle.Versatile broadcaster

Caudle, who was born in Charlotte, began his broadcasting career in 1954 in Wilmington, N.C., where he did a popular talk show with a dog puppet named Hester.

“Bob and Hester” was a “minor take-off” on “Captain Kangaroo,” says Caudle, who also did sports at the small, one-camera operation.

Several years later he moved to Savannah, Ga.

“They were trying to open up the Savannah market. We put up a ring at the station there and I did about three or four shows with an old-time wrestler named Bibber McCoy. Not many people remember him, but he was an Irishman out of the Boston area.”

Caudle soon left for Raleigh and a job at WRAL where he worked from 1960-80. He did the news and weather in addition to the wrestling. He continued to do wrestling after leaving the station.

In 1986 the Mid-Atlantic show changed its named to “NWA Pro Wrestling.” WWE Hall of Fame announcer Jim Ross joined Caudle at the announce desk in 1988.

Caudle continued to work for the promotion after it was sold to Ted Turner in late 1988, working several live “Clash of the Champions” telecasts on Superstation WTBS along with several pay-per-view events.

But as the promotion departed from its NWA roots and morphed into WCW, Caudle left the company in 1991.

One of his favorite sidekicks during that period was longtime Memphis announcer Lance Russell.

“Lance Russell is one of my favorite guys. We had a lot of fun together, and I’m just crazy about Lance.”

During the second half of his announcing career, Caudle worked as a legislative assistant for then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and remained in that position until 1996 when Caudle retired.

“It was fun. I really enjoyed it,” Caudle says of the 16 years he spent working for the lawmaker, whom he had previously worked with at WRAL.Colorful territory

Caudle says he has many memories of Mid-Atlantic wrestling, noting that it was a favorite territory for many of that era’s top stars.

“Mid-Atlantic was one of the best territories in the country. We had outstanding guys. Even the guys who’d come in and stay for 8, 10, 15 weeks and leave, they’d always come back. So many came in and stayed ... guys like Ric Flair.”

“Flair was a really flamboyant guy with that long hair. He was a good-looking guy and had a good body at that time. I always thought Flair was very good and knew he would do very well.”

Caudle says he also had fun with Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson.

“Hawk and Hanson were both great guys. I always told everybody that if I was ever in a dark alley and got caught by a couple of guys, I’d want Swede Hanson to be on my side. He and Rip were really a fun couple. Rip was a real jokester and liked to pull ribs on people.”

Like the time Raleigh sportscaster Nick Pond was in the studio doing the six o’clock report, and Hawk snuck around him on all fours, out of camera view, trying to set his copy on fire.

Caudle laments the fact that so many of those legends have passed on.

“One guy I really miss is Sir Oliver Humperdink. I’ve got a picture of him on my computer’s screen saver. My wife and I both loved him. He was such a great guy to be around.”

Caudle had more than his share of memorable moments during his announcing days.

He recalls one such occasion when one of the area’s top heel teams of the ‘60s, Skull Murphy and Brute Bernard, were doing an interview.

“Brute would get out there in front of the desk and go around and around. I was standing behind the desk with Skull. Nobody knew about it or thought about it at the time, but the desk was on rollers. I said something to Skull, and Brute made out like he got mad and came charging in and hit that desk. That desk rammed right into us. And later, in a low voice, Brute mumbled, ‘Sorry about that.’ I never will forget that.”

So many memories, says Caudle, and so many unique, colorful characters.

Caudle rattles off names of performers that were once part of his weekly routine. Names like George Becker and Johnny Weaver, the Scott Brothers, the Andersons.

“We had all the great tag teams. It was just unbelievable. I really think we were the tag-team territory then.”

Caudle particularly enjoyed performers who could work in the ring. “Tim Woods could really wrestle. I loved to watch Tim in the ring. He was one of my very favorites. And Tim left us too soon as well.”

“And of course Ole (Anderson) wouldn’t like it,” Caudle laughs, “but Flair was one of my favorites. But Ole and Gene were two of my favorites as far as tag teams go.”

“I have a lot of fond memories when you think about it,” says Caudle, “I really miss those days. I don’t know that I’d want to relive everything I’ve lived, but I miss those days. They were special times. It was great.”‘So long for now’

Caudle lives in Raleigh where he has been for most of the past 50 years. He moved briefly to a lakehouse on the North Carolina-Virginia border, but for health concerns returned to the Raleigh area in 2004.

“We bought a townhouse. I don’t have to do any yard work anymore,” he chuckles.

Caudle, who suffered a series of heart attacks in 2007, says he’s doing well physically and takes daily medication.

“I haven’t had any more heart problems since the doctor put the stint in,” he says.

He and wife Jackie have been married for 64 years.

“That’s pretty good for an old guy,” says Caudle.

Caudle says he could never have imagined that so many fans would still remember Mid-Atlantic wrestling so many years later.

Unfortunately, says Caudle, he didn’t save any memorabilia from that period.

“I didn’t save anything. I don’t have any memorabilia at all. Just think what I could have had ... had I just kept all the formats for all those shows we taped. But I had no idea at the time. I wished I had saved it, but I didn’t. ”

To Caudle, and his many of his contemporaries during those days, it was just another job.

“ I never thought we were doing anything that special. It was like we had just gotten by another week.”

But for a generation of Mid-Atlantic wrestling fans, they were memories that will last a lifetime.

And in closing, Caudle has a message for all those fans. It’s one, he jokes, that his wife is going to put on his gravestone.

“Fans, that`s all the time that we have for now, see you next week and so long for now.”

Bob Caudle is legitimately one of the nicest human beings I have ever met. Just a great guy, and you can often find him in the lobby when he's not scheduled for autographs and photo ops.

Here's a photo from the 2010 event in Charlotte with Bob and former broadcast partner Jim Ross.

Also, going by an update on Facebook, it seems that the first vendor guest has been confirmed.

Ox Baker, Master of the Heart Punch. During his career, Ox held several titles in various territories including the AWA, Georgia, Indianapolis, Florida, and Australia.

In 1971, Alberto Torres died after a match with Ox, and while Ox was in no way responsible (it was actually due to a pre-existing condition), fans and even promoters blamed the heart punch. The following year, Atlanta hero Ray Gunkel died from a heart attack during a match with Ox. Once again, this just ended up adding to his heat.

Along with his wrestling career, Ox also appeared in John Carpenter's film Escape From New York.

Brown broke into the business in 1979 under the tutelage of Rick Conners in Knoxville, Tenn.

“I trained the first two years,” says Brown. “Ricky would take me over to ‘the Bubble’ at the University of Tennessee and beat my (behind) every day. I had grass strains on my teeth.”

There was no place for a wrestling ring, so the grapplers trained on the ball field.

“I took backdrops on the ground. Rick literally busted my ears and my nose. But it made me tough.”

During the daytime, says Brown, they would work out with the UT wrestling team.

“We’d work out in the morning with the wrestling team and come back in the evening and work out on the field. I was getting it all the way around.”

When Johnny Majors took over as head football coach at Tennessee, says Brown, the wrestlers had to find a new home and took their training to nearby Carson-Newman College.

The training, however, didn’t get any easier.

“They let us in because they didn’t have any heavyweights to work out with. Rick and I worked down in the Dungeon, and every time they wanted to show how to hook or throw somebody, they called me over. They called me the ‘wrestling dummy.’ I absorbed all of that stuff. I did that for two years.”

Brown’s first match was in Chattanooga, Tenn., teaming with Crazy Luke Graham against Hector Guerrero and Bobby Ward. “We tore the house down,” he says.

He also fondly recalls another early bout with The Superstar (Bill Eadie).

“I didn’t know Bill very well, and Bill didn’t know me. I was only around 170 pounds. I was a little scrawny guy, but I was in shape,” says Brown.

“Bill did a duck-under, go-behind, waist-lift takedown. I had just got out of wrestling school and worked out with two different colleges. What do you think I did?”

Brown, who was well versed working the amateur style, simply did “what came natural.”

“I hit the ground on my hands and knees, sat out and spun around. I fired back up, we squared

off, and Bill had the biggest grin on his face. He loved it.

“He came back in the dressing room, walked over to me, shook my hand, and thanked me. He still beat me, but he said I gave him credibility. I didn’t mean to do it. It was just a reaction. I just did what came natural.”No overnight sensation

“Downtown” Denny Brown got used to being rejected because of his size.

But he never gave up.

“I was let go three times,” he says. “But I had to work my (behind) off. I had to work twice as hard.”

“Chief Jay Strongbow told me to get out the first time he ever met me,” says Brown. “He said I had no business being there. I once went to the (Tampa) Sportatorium and talked to the booker, J.J. Dillon, who slammed the door on me and told me they weren’t looking for anybody. Dusty Rhodes later let me go.”

Angelo “Big Nasty” Mosca, he claims, once busted his eardrum during a match. Just because he could.

But Brown knew his day would come.

A welder by trade, Brown had been working in that vocation when he decided to drop by the Bayfront Center in St. Pete to say hello to an old friend, Les Thornton, with whom he had met in Tennessee.

Thornton, a top-ranked junior heavyweight, asked Brown if he was working.

“Yeah, every damn day,” Brown told him. “I’m working down on the beach humping steel and welding.”

“Les said, ‘You’re not working in the business?’ I told him nobody had offered me.”

Brown says former NWA world champion Dory Funk Jr. was the booker at the time, and Thornton invited Brown back to the dressing room to introduce him to some of the boys.

“He takes me back there and introduces me to Dory. Ric Flair came over to say hello because we had worked together in Southeastern Championship Wrestling in Tennessee. Les told me to sit down at this table and to not move.”

Next thing Brown knew, Funk came over with his booking sheet and asked Brown if he could make TV tapings that Wednesday night.

“They put me out there and I worked with Jimmy Garvin. I was like greased lightning anyway because I was so small. We were all over the place, and he hit me with a backdrop. My feet touched the lights up there. He beats me, and that’s it.”

The impressive newcomer was offered a chance to return the following week. There was only one small problem. He had a job that could be in jeopardy.

A couple days later, says Brown, Funk called him on the phone and said, ‘Hey, kid, can you come down and do TV?’ I told him I couldn’t because I would lose my job if I took any more time off.” Funk hung up, but 20 minutes later, promoter Eddie Graham called Brown. “He said, ‘Hey, kid, can you come down and do TV?’ I said, ‘Eddie, I can’t do TV on Wednesdays, they’re going to fire me.’”

Brown, as he had predicted, was fired from his welding job, but he went on to work the match. Graham was so impressed with Brown’s performance that he gave the injured Terry Allen’s (the future Magnum T.A.) spot in a tag team with Brian Blair to Brown.

“Here I am working semi-main event every night teaming with Brian Blair all over Florida,” says Brown. “I was on my way.”Proving himself again

When Funk left Florida for a booking job in Charlotte, things changed for Brown as Dusty Rhodes assumed control of the office.

“I had to sit through hours and hours of interviews with Dusty interviewing everyone. I walked in with two other job guys. I thought I was in a good spot because Eddie was my buddy. But Dusty said he didn’t need us guys anymore.”

Brown was crestfallen. “He dropped me like a bad habit.”

Rhodes told Brown that he knew he had talent, and said he could come back and do TVs every Wednesday and they’d see where things went.

Brown worked every week, and Rhodes became more impressed with every outing. He even asked the talented Hector Guerrero to work with Brown.

Their bouts routinely were among the best on the card.

“Nobody could keep up with Hector and me,” says Brown. “Tully Blanchard got so upset one night up in Ohio that he started cussing and screaming. Arn Anderson asked him what was wrong. Tully said, ‘How the hell are we going to follow that?’ Arn said, ‘It’s the first match. If you can’t follow that, you don’t need to be on top.’”

Brown says Rhodes eventually rewarded him with the world junior heavyweight title.

“Dusty finally came up to me and told me that we were going to have a world junior heavyweight division, and that I was the champ. I asked him when we had the tournament. He said we already had it, and that I was the champ.”

Brown was a regular on the popular Championship Wrestling From Florida show until 1984 when Rhodes took Brown with him to the Charlotte-based Crockett Promotions after he and Graham had a falling out.

Brown arrived in the Mid-Atlantic area that year and worked there until the late ‘80s.

He won his first world junior heavyweight title by defeating Mike Davis at the second Starrcade event in Greensboro, N.C., in 1984.

Within the next 13 months, he would also win the title from Gary Royal and Steve Regal.

“Dusty referred to the underneath guys as my guys. I was the junior champion,” says Brown.

His favorite opponents, he says, were Davis, Guerrero, Royal and Regal. “I could work with anybody. I could do it every single night and have good matches.”‘Show Starter’

Brown grew up an avid wrestling fan and vividly recalls watching Eddie Graham wrestle when he was only 7 years old.

One of his childhood acquaintances in his hometown of St. Petersburg was Richard Blood (the future Ricky Steamboat). The two went to school together and grew up in the same neighborhood.

“He was more friends with my brother because my brother is a little older. His family owned a gas station on the beach. We would hang out at the local hamburger joint. He had an old Chevy Vega. He was always interested in cars. Ricky was also the star running back on the high school football team.”

Brown, meanwhile, played baseball in school and was an accomplished catcher and pitcher.

But wrestling, his first love, eventually turned out to be his meal ticket. He served several years in the Navy before beginning wrestling training at the age of 23. He never looked back.

“I wasn’t the ‘show stopper,’ but I was the ‘show starter.’ That’s why they kept me around,” says Brown.

Brown learned early on the basics of wrestling, and he absorbed all the knowledge he could about the business.

“I traveled with Mike Davis and Mike Rotundo in Florida for several years. I’d sit in the back seat and keep my mouth shut. If I opened my mouth, they’d slap the crap out of me. But I was learning all the time.”

It was a good career, says Brown, who retired from full-time action in 1992.

Nowadays “Downtown” Denny Brown can be found back in St. Petersburg.

“I’ve got a nice place by myself. I have three boys (ages 14, 16, 19), but I’m not married anymore.”

Brown has worked for Progressive Insurance for the past five years, and is three semesters away from earning his associate’s degree at a local college.

“I was bored. I just didn’t have anything else to do,” says Brown, who is most interested in political science and philosophy.

Brown says he never was afraid of a challenge.

“I was an iron worker. I’m used to being out there doing stuff that most people are too scared to do.”

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Apr 20, 2013 9:57:50 GMT -5

Mention the name Anderson to a grappling fan, and chances are good that the conversation will quickly turn to one of the greatest tag teams in pro wrestling history.

Few names have such a rich heritage in the wrestling business. The Anderson Brothers represent tag-team royalty, and set the bar high for duos that would follow and try to emulate their style and success.

The Andersons were rugged and brutal, but their strategy was simple. They would methodically wear down their opponents — often working over one particular part of the body — before finally pinning or making their victims submit. And when their foes would attempt to make a tag, the Andersons would employ their patented blocking technique to prevent it.

Most fans will remember the latter and more recognized Anderson Brothers version of Gene and Ole.

The original “Minnesota Wrecking Crew,” however, was composed of Gene and Lars Anderson, with Ole (Al “Rock” Rogowski) eventually being introduced as a third member.

Years later Arn Anderson (Marty Lunde), a fictitious nephew/cousin, would be brought in as a member of the extended family and would team with Ole as part of the legendary Four Horsemen.

Lars Anderson, now 74, will be a featured guest at the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest to be held Aug. 1-4 in Charlotte.

Anderson, whose real name is Larry Heiniemi, has many fond memories of working in the Carolinas-Virginia territory during the ‘60s. It was a special time, he says, and he’s hoping to catch up with some of his old colleagues at the August event.

“I’m looking forward to it because that’s where we got our first big break. I’m also looking forward to talking to the fans. It always took two to make it all work out.”

The event will mark Anderson’s second Fanfest and his first time back in Charlotte in more than 30 years. He attended the Atlanta Fanfest in 2011 and got to reunite with Ole for the first time since 1982 in that same city.

“Ole’s had some major issues, but his mind is still there. It was good to see him ... he’s pretty mellowed out,” says Lars.

He’s also excited about the “Mid-Atlantic Memories” documentary that will be filmed during the event in August.

“It should be very interesting. I’m sure going to contribute what I can to it.”

Lars is humbled that the Anderson name is still revered in pro wrestling circles.

“I feel very good about that. I’m known either way ... as Larry Heiniemi or Lars Anderson. I run into people in various places, and they know me from somewhere.”

His career, he notes, has come full circle. “It’s just amazing how time flies.”

The Anderson dynasty took root in 1965 when AWA owner Verne Gagne put together Gene Anderson, a state high school champion who had wrestled at North Dakota State for a year before turning pro in 1961, with Heiniemi, an ex-college standout at St. Cloud State and an AAU champion.

Within months of teaming, Gene and Lars Anderson would be headlining shows in the Carolinas and Virginia. At that time the area boasted some of the top tag teams in the country.

“It really was the hotbed of tag-team wrestling,” says Anderson. “If you didn’t have a tag partner, you didn’t get past the second or third match on the card. It set the tone for my career as a tag-team wrestler. The style that we created there nobody ever really duplicated.”Amateur to pro

Larry Heiniemi — aka Lars Anderson — is far removed from the days when he and Gene wreaked havoc throughout the Mid-Atlantic area.

The Grand Rapids, Minn., native now makes his home in Nevada City, Calif., about 50 miles from Lake Tahoe, Nev. “I love it here,” Anderson says from his office where he is running and financing his youngest son’s company.

“I own the thing 100 percent, but it’s his company,” he laughs. “He’s on vacation diving in the Philippines right now.”

Anderson has vast experience in the business world. He’s been a successful entrepreneur for a number of years, dating back to his time in the wrestling profession.

Anderson, an alternate on the U.S. Olympic team in 1964 in Greco-Roman wrestling, graduated from St. Cloud State University in 1965 following a stellar collegiate career.

It was at St. Cloud State where Anderson, known at that time under his real name, Larry Heiniemi, met up with another future “Anderson brother.” Alan Rogowski had attended the University of Colorado, but landed at St. Cloud State.

“Ole was more into the fraternity thing, and I was a jock,” says Anderson, who also played defensive end and defensive tackle on the football team. “The way it worked out was that he would do these interviews imitating The Crusher. He didn’t play football, but he did try out for the wrestling team. One of the highlights was a wrestling match between the fraternity and the jocks. It was a pretty intense setting. I wrestled him, and that’s how it all started.”

The two struck up a friendship that wouldn’t end in college.

With Gagne constantly scouting quality amateur talent, it wasn’t long before Heiniemi found himself in the pro ranks. Helping Gagne and Eddie Sharkey with the training was Gene Anderson.

“Verne sent him to work out with me. That’s how the Anderson Brothers started.”

While the pro style was different from what Heiniemi had been accustomed to in the amateur ranks, the transition wasn’t difficult.

“It was Gagne’s influence there. Although it’s a totally different game, it (amateur experience) gave me a different sense of things.”

Adapting to the fans, he says, was an entirely different matter.

“I remember shortly after I first started, I worked as a babyface against Gene in Peoria, Ill., and we were working a professional match. Fans were saying stuff like, ‘Why don’t you go back to college and learn to wrestle?’ I said what is this?”

Anderson laughs at the fact that fans were unaware of his amateur background.

“This was show biz, but you had a base. Because of it I had a more confident attitude.”Making a name

In a matter of months Gagne sent the pair packing to Tennessee to work for promoter Nick Gulas. It was there that they introduced the Anderson Brothers moniker.

Their first match as a team was in a losing effort to Karl and Eric Von Brauner on March 17, 1966, in Chattanooga.

“It didn’t work out in Tennessee. It was horrible,” says Lars.

The disgruntled rookie made a call to Gagne, who in turn contacted Charlotte-based promoter Jim Crockett Sr., and the Andersons soon found themselves in a new territory.

It was in the Carolinas where Gene, who had worked for Crockett Promotions several years earlier, and Lars would hone their tag-team skills.

“The promoter there, old man Crockett, said he had been pushing The Missouri Mauler and The Great Malenko. He indicated that it would have been much better to have pushed us, since they weren’t drawing. We were there for about six months and then went to Atlanta.”

The Andersons made a big splash in Georgia, winning that territory’s version of the NWA world tag-team title, and selling out venues for their bouts with Enrique and Ramon Torres.

“We were on top in Atlanta, and we stayed there for about six or seven months before returning to Charlotte. The rest is history.”

Gene and Lars, now established heels with a proven track record, hit their stride when they returned to the Carolinas in May 1967. The tag-team competition was intense, and the Andersons wasted little time in making their presence known.

There were top babyface duos such as George Becker and Johnny Weaver, Nelson Royal and Paul Jones, Haystacks Calhoun and The Amazing Zuma, Abe Jacobs and Luther Lindsay, along with fellow heel combos such as The Mauler and Hiro Matsuda, Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson, Aldo Bogni and Bronko Lubich, and Billy and Jimmy Hines.

One of the Andersons’ favorite teams to work with was the popular brother combo of George and Sandy Scott.

“We sold out with the Scott Brothers in Greenville 28 weeks in a row,” boasts Lars. “They were enjoyable and easy to work with. We had the match down pretty much. We had a particular style that we created, and it was difficult for other teams to copy that style because it was a recognizable style that only we did.”

Some red-hot angles on Raleigh TV had made the well-oiled twosome the most hated wrestlers in the area. A blazing feud with Nelson Royal and Tex McKenzie was set up when Lars delivered his feared knee drop from the top rope onto the throat of McKenzie. The big Texan was hospitalized, and when he finally returned, the two teams sold out arenas throughout the territory.

With Gene’s stiff style in the ring and Lars’ strong mic ability, the duo found just the right chemistry. Along with Gene, says Lars, the two would create most of the Anderson Brothers’ famed repertoire.

“Gene and I got along very well. But he didn’t have any camera presence. He couldn’t project and had really never made any money in the industry. He had the work down more, but he couldn’t handle the microphone. I could handle the microphone back in those days. It just all came together.”

Lars has many fond memories of working in the Mid-Atlantic area. He recalls one particular match teaming with Gene against Becker and Weaver at the Spartanburg Auditorium.

“As a young bump-taker, I’d try to take higher bumps than the other guy. I remember taking this backdrop in Spartanburg. The ring was a flat, old, hard boxing ring. I took a hellacious bump trying to outdo Gene, and when I came down, blood started coming out of my mouth.”

Gene, regarded as one of the toughest grapplers in the game, was unfazed.

“I told Gene I had to go to the hospital. He said, ‘Ah, kid, you’ll be OK.’ I did go the next day and have an X-ray, and I had ruptured something. I thought I was dying actually.”

As hated heels, the team also experienced some narrow escapes, including a post-match incident in Roanoke, Va., where fans tossed chairs at the duo as they tried to make it back to the dressing room.

“We got chased out of Roanoke with chairs flying,” laughs Anderson.

The only time he says he really got scared, though, was during a match at the Chicago Amphitheater.

“Larry Hennig and I were working with The Bruiser and Crusher. Twenty thousand people were chanting, ‘We want blood! We want blood!’’ And I was never really a big bleeder. Fortunately I had Gene and Ole for that. I didn’t believe in it myself. But that night I’m looking at Larry and asking: ‘What in the hell are we doing here?’”Ole joins group

The next chapter of the Anderson Brothers was unveiled in 1968 when they brought in a third, younger “brother.”

Lars’ college acquaintance Alan Rogowski had enlisted in the Army prior to breaking into the pro ranks in 1967.

“I had seen him wrestle in Minneapolis, and later I suggested him for the third brother gimmick. That’s when we brought him in,” says Lars.

Not much thought, however, had been given to what the new Anderson brother’s first name would be.

“I thought it was a rib, so I just laughed it off,” Ole would later say. “I didn’t know they really meant it until I got into the ring and the ring announcer introduced me.”

Lars, who is of Finnish descent and had cousins named Anderson, says the name Ole sounded like a Swedish name, so it made sense.

Bringing in Ole didn’t change the dynamic of the team, says Lars, it only strengthened the unit.

Sporting their trademark maroon and gold striped boots (the school color of the University of Minnesota), they all looked the part of brothers despite the fact that none were actually related. And while the hard-nosed Gene looked years older than Lars, only a year separated the two.

“Gene didn’t wear well,” says Lars. “He looked older in his mid-20s. He must not have slept well at night. I don’t know what it was. He always had that nervous tick. But he was an excellent teacher and was very patient.”

Gene was the mechanic of the team, taking most of the bumps, says Ole. Damage to his neck caused him to constantly twitch.

“He was never in a frame of mind to get the doggone thing looked at by doctors, so he suffered with it all of his life,” he says. “He had a lot of problems. Like all of us, he had taken a lot of bumps and had done a lot of damage to himself as a result. Being a heel was tremendously tough on the body. He just ignored everything; he was just a tough son of a gun.”

Ole recalls once listening to a report on the radio listing the three most harmful things you could put into your body: chocolate, caffeine and cigarettes. He looked over at Gene, who was eating a box of chocolate doughnuts, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. “What else could you possibly do to shorten your life any more,” he asked.

The threesome clicked inside the ring and worked a series of six-man matches with George Becker, Johnny Weaver and Sailor Art Thomas that popped the territory. In another notable six-man bout, popular Nelson Royal went to the drastic lengths of teaming with hated rivals Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson in an attempt to exact revenge against the even more hated Anderson trio.

But it wasn’t long before Lars began thinking about entering a new phase of his career.

“Ole was there about six months when I decided I wanted to go back to Minneapolis and work as a single.”

But Anderson wouldn’t forget that the Mid-Atlantic area was the territory that put him on the wrestling map. Nor would he forget the man that ran that territory.

“Jim Crockett Sr. was excellent. I really liked the way they ran the office at that time. When you went to the office, you had to have a suit and tie. He was a very nice guy to deal with. He was a true gentleman.”

The most surprising thing about Gene and Lars Anderson’s stint in the Mid-Atlantic area is that they never claimed the tag-team title. (The Southern tag-team belts were once held up for several weeks before being returned to Becker and Weaver).

Lars only chuckles at that notion. “That office ... it was a hard nut to crack.”

The office at the time was run by George Becker.

“The guy was like ... I don’t know old he was when we were there. He must have been 60.”

Fans still turned out in droves in hopes of seeing the veteran Becker, with his much younger partner Johnny Weaver, turn back the hated Andersons.

“Taking bumps for George Becker put me in training for Dusty Rhodes,” Ole would later joke.‘We wrestled’

When Rogowski replaced Lars, the team didn’t miss a beat. Like Lars and Gene, Ole was a Verne Gagne trainee and a polished amateur. Eventually adding even more luster to the Anderson team was the addition of a young Ric Flair, another Gagne product from Minnesota who Ole brought in as an Anderson “cousin.”

Ole had known Gene since his high school days in Minnesota. While Gene was a grade ahead and three years older than Ole, they competed against one another in football, wrestling and track.

They were the consummate heel team. There was no canned crowd heat when the Andersons hit the ring. Whether working as bad guys or in a very rare babyface role, Gene and Ole commanded respect. There were no catch phrases. They spoke volumes by working the most believable, realistic matches this side of Johnny Valentine.

“We just did one thing better than anyone else — we wrestled,” Ole would say. “We tried to make wrestling as real as we could make it. Gene used to say that we want to shoot, but we don’t want to hurt anybody. Beat the hell out of the guy, but try not to remove any teeth. We didn’t get quite that bad, but in some cases we did. When we did, there were some guys who said they didn’t want to hang around for this. On a couple of occasions, guys packed their bags and we never saw them again.”

With Lars out of the picture, Ole, who had been in the business for less than two years, had an offer to move to Georgia and form a team there with the talented Paul DeMarco.

“I liked Paul, and he was a pretty good performer,” said Anderson. “He was cocky, and that fit my criteria.”

Before Ole could make a decision, however, the more subdued and low-key Gene gave him an offer that he couldn’t refuse.

“All he had to say was, ‘Well, what do you want to do? If you want to stay and be partners, we can just stay and be partners.’ Paul DeMarco was far flashier, but Gene was going to be the solid guy. He thought the world of me ... maybe not that first year and not even the second year, because there were times he wanted to kill me in between. But he knew that I could do the talking and carry my end of it, he could do the rest, and we’d make money and everybody would be happy.”

Ole was right. It was a perfect wrestling marriage, and that fact didn’t escape the elder Crockett, who knew a good thing when he saw it. The Andersons realized their real worth when Crockett brought them into his Charlotte office in 1970 and told them: “You boys can stay here as long as you want.”Lars turns ‘Luscious’

By the late ‘60s Lars returned to his home area of Minnesota where he was now billed as “Luscious” Lars Anderson and teamed with veteran Larry “The Axe” Hennig.

The “Luscious” character, which now encompassed bleached blond hair and a Fu Manchu mustache, was a radical departure from the crewcut and rough-edged Lars Anderson.

“I am Luscious. It came naturally,” he jokes.

Anderson, who held the AWA Midwest singles title, enjoyed a nice run with Hennig as his partner.

“He was pretty decent to work with,” says Lars, who shared the AWA Midwest tag-team title with Hennig. “We had good matches working with the Bastiens, and Crusher and Bruiser. We had a good time up there.”

He also enjoyed working for his trainer and promoter.

“I liked working for Verne. It was home. The trips were a little bit long there, so I got a pilot’s license and started flying myself to various towns. It was better than driving the Porsche 120 miles an hour down the road.”

Lars would form a top team working in San Francisco with Paul DeMarco during 1972-73.

“A little flighty, but very underrated. A heel of a worker, a good interview,” he says of DeMarco, with whom he held the San Francisco version of the NWA world tag-team title. “We had good matches out there with Rocky Johnson and Pepper Gomez. Pat was a little difficult to work with ... difference in philosophies I guess.”

Lars would later bring in Les “Buddy” Wolfe (Wolff), another Gagne-trained performer, as a partner back in Minnesota. The two had wrestled and played football together in college.

“He was actually playing football in the Continental League for the Neptunes. Gene and I had broken him in in North Carolina. We did pretty well. Not as well as Larry and I did, but we had the same sort of concept and style as the Anderson Brothers.”

Lars retired for a brief time in 1973 and, while living in Aspen, operated a successful chain of T-shirt stores with Wolfe.

Serving as president of Shirt Shack International, he became the first person to introduce and franchise T-shirt stores to the mall industry.

“I had the first national T-shirt store company and the first store in New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, Milwaukee, Chicago,” says Anderson.

The partnership, though, eventually dissolved.

The two also would market an abdominal exercise device called the “Tummy Twister.”

But the lure of wrestling eventually brought Anderson back.

“I had sort of retired at that time. I had turned in my pink card in Minneapolis in ‘73. I just decided to get back into the wrestling business,” says Lars, who eventually dropped the Anderson moniker and began wrestling under his real name.Working with Ole

Lars Anderson would continue wrestling throughout the ‘70s and even into the ‘80s, but never seemed to attain the level of success he had as a member of the famed Anderson Brothers, or as “Luscious” Lars Anderson or Larry Heiniemi.

He had a stint with the ill-fated IWA (International Wrestling Association) in 1975 followed by an unsuccessful attempt to start his own Georgia-based promotion called the Universal Wrestling Association.

“That’s when the friction actually started when I stopped working for the mainstream wrestling group (Georgia Championship Wrestling). People thought I was trying to steal the territory. The program was on Satellite Program Network — the same earth station that Ted Turner’s programming went out on. But the other group was tough to deal with.”

Anderson would return to GCW in 1977 and would reform his old team with Georgia booker Ole Anderson.

A dispute between the two erupted, however, when Ole sent Lars to Detroit to work a show.

“I went to Detroit for one night. I called Ole up and told him this was BS because I didn’t want to work in Detroit.”

Lars left after one match and went to New York where his wife was living at the time.

“Ole told me I was now unemployable. I told him fine.”

Two days later, says Lars, he got a call from the Florida office.

“They wanted somebody to work Johnny Valentine’s gimmick ... beat up on people and do hour and 45-minute matches. So he was the booker. So I went and put my boots and my stuff in the locker room. So I said, ‘What do I do now, Johnny?’ I did hour matches. I did a two-hour match with Pedro Morales in Miami where I lost 18 pounds.”

Lars spent only a few months in Florida, but was able to win the Florida heavyweight title on two different occasions from Dusty Rhodes while there.

“I was sort of going on my own at that point,” says Lars. The differences with Ole, he adds, were strictly business.

“Ole and I got along pretty well at first, but when he started booking in Georgia, it was a little different go-around. But he was running a business, and he had to run it the way he wanted to run it.”

Lars would return to Atlanta in early 1978 and resume his partnership with Ole. The two would win the Georgia tag-team title several times over the next couple of years before engaging in a bloody feud of their own in late 1980 that included Lights Out matches, No DQ matches and even boxing matches.

In an August 1980 bout, Gene and Ole joined forces to defeat Lars and partner Stan Hansen.

The following year saw Lars compete briefly for the Atlanta-based International Wrestling League run by Thunderbolt Patterson in competition with the NWA Georgia office.Promoting in Hawaii

Anderson spent the final years of his career wrestling in Hawaii for Polynesian Pro Wrestling.

In 1983 he took a job in Hawaii as booker for Liv Maivia’s promotion.

“I bought into the promotion over there. We did promotion in Samoa, New Zealand, the Philippines.”

The relationship with Maivia, widow of wrestling great High Chief Peter Maivia and grandmother of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, lasted for several years until Polynesian Pro Wrestling folded. Anderson says the partnership went well until he suggested that the group begin running major outdoor events.

“The concept of doing Aloha Stadium came from when the Anderson Brothers were in the Carolinas,” he says. “We used to go to places like Roanoke and do about $3,500 or $4,000 houses indoors, and then we’d go outside at the stadium and do a $12,000 or $14,000 house. I told them we should promote Aloha Stadium. That’s where the concept started.”

That’s also when, he claims, the heat was put on him and “they tried to kill me.”

“When they saw what the potential was, one of the other stockholders or one of the Samoan employees said we’ll get rid of this guy. They actually tried to kill me. I got hit from behind. I woke up in the hospital being sutured on. I asked them what was I doing here. The doctor said, ‘Yeah, what are you doing here?’”

He says he still believes he was set up in the attack.

“They’re a little heavy-handed over there. The laws the way they are in Hawaii ... you eventually have to kill someone. You get a slap in the hand.”

In 1996 Anderson resurfaced to form the short-lived World League Wrestling.Looking back

Quite the entrepreneur, Anderson mixed a variety of business ventures with his wrestling career.

For 21 years he was an executive salesman for Acura of Honolulu. It was the first Honda dealership in the country, and he consistently set sales records and was named top Executive Sales and Leasing Consultant.

These days he serves as CEO of a business called Shield N Seal. The family company, founded in 2011, produces specialized vacuum food-saving sealer machines, along with patent-pending technology sealing bags that serve as protection for food preservation.

The products, says Anderson, were created for gardeners, hunters, fishermen and indoor gardening enthusiasts who increasingly expressed the need for a better way to preserve their goods.

“We do quite well in northern California, but we also are in Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota and Michigan. I try to keep ahead of the game.”

Anderson looks back at his wrestling career with fond memories.

He was only 27 when he first arrived in the Mid-Atlantic, and that seems like a lifetime ago for Anderson.

The tough-as-nails Gene Anderson died of heart failure at the age of 52 in 1991.

The always outspoken Ole Anderson, now 70, has suffered from multiple sclerosis for the past decade.

Despite his close association with his wrestling brothers and other partners over the years, he admits that he never really got close to anyone in the business.

“I guess it’s the Finnish ancestry,” he says. “This doctor once did a dissertation. He went to a number of bus stops around the world. In Finland the closest he got get to a stranger at a bus stop was about 10 feet. I really don’t know what it is, but they seem to hold their distance.”

Lars, who turned 74 in March, has six children. A daughter, Lora Elizabeth Heiniemi, is better known as lead singer “ralo” of the band Mantra Truck.

He has remained active.

“I work out three days a week. I go skiing. We’re about 45 miles away from ski area. I’ve been skiing since I was 3 years old. My grandfather used to make my skis for me when I was a kid.”

An admitted loner during his days in the business, yet one who had a successful career with a place in history, he gives a positive response when asked if he would do it all over again.

“Actually I would,” he says without hesitation. “But I’d probably do some things differently.”

Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Apr 21, 2013 13:12:13 GMT -5

For a blue-collar kid from the steel town of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, it can be stated with relative certainty that Johnny Powers did pretty well for himself. Powers spent 20 years in the wrestling profession, and during that time achieved an amazing degree of success that would carry over to other business ventures.

A risk-taking, forward-thinking promoter at heart, Powers was a darling of the pro wrestling community during the '60s and '70s. With good looks, a 6-4, 260-pound athletic body, and a sharp mind for the business, the wrestler nicknamed the "Golden Adonis" became a major star by his mid-20s.

A three-time National Wrestling Federation world champion and seven-time North American titleholder, the resourceful Powers founded his wrestling organization, was a pioneer in wrestling syndication and produced the first "Super Bowl of Wrestling" at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium in 1972.

Powers just might be better known in the Mid-Atlantic area, however, for his role in heading up an organization during the mid-'70s that posed a serious challenge to the established Crockett Promotions. "We had a reasonable chance because we had a leg up on the creative side and the talent side. But I didn't anticipate those old Crockett rascals buying a losing hockey team in Winston-Salem to get a lock on a building," reflects Powers, now 70 and living back in his hometown of Hamilton.

Powers was booker for the IWA (International Wrestling Association), a direct descendant of the NWF (National Wrestling Federation), which promoted shows in upstate New York, western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio from 1970 to 1974.

When TV sports entrepreneur and money man Eddie Einhorn backed out of the fledgling group in 1975, it was Powers who kept the company running as a regional promotion, reshaping the IWA around a three-state circuit consisting of Virginia and the Carolinas. Powers kept the territory alive for nearly three years before an antitrust case in U.S. federal court took the wind out of the company's sails.

A lawsuit that Powers filed claimed the Crocketts and area venue managers were working together to keep the IWA from scheduling events in the major arenas in the territory. "Crockett took the Winston-Salem Coliseum - which was my main town - away from me," says Powers. "Then I went to court, and 12 nice little folks in a jury totally didn't understand what an antitrust suit and restraint of trade was. They figured that it had been that way for 30 years, so it must be OK."

Powers, who never gave up on anything without a good fight, harkened back to the words of his "spiritual papa," veteran promoter Ignacio "Pedro" Martinez, who had mentored Powers in the art of creative event marketing of pro wrestling. "He taught me how to promote and survive. He told me that sometimes a town wants you to leave. Sometimes a territory wants you to leave. Sometimes you've got to try to read those things and make a choice."

Unable to break the lock of the territorial system, it was time to for Powers to cut his losses. His three-year run, from 1975-78, was over. "I think the creative heart went out of me after that. I thought that maybe I had done what I should have done in the business." Powers' creative influence, though, would be far from over.

And while the Carolinas remain just one small footnote in the vast and colorful history of Johnny Powers, he's looking forward to returning to Charlotte - the traditional heart of Crockett wrestling country - as a special guest this August at the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Legends Fanfest.

Powers says it's not the wrestling he remembers so much as it is the beauty of the area and its people. "My best memory of the whole thing is the people," says Powers. "I was so totally enthralled by the good-naturedness of the people and also the beauty of the Carolinas. There's a natural, unique beauty to that area down there ... there's beautiful, nice people in a great surrounding."

Not only did Powers leave his wrestling mark on the area, he also made a financial investment locally. Powers had a real estate broker's license from New York State when he left the wrestling business in 1978. He later activated it in three other states after having witnessed the beauty and potential along the Carolinas-Virginia coastline.

"I rented a Piper Turbo Navajo and flew up and down the coast from Richmond all the way down to Charleston," relates Powers. During that trip, he noticed an old arcade along Folly Beach. Upon further inquiry, he learned that the popular landmark was owned by a Folly Beach church.

"I know Folly Beach well. I flew in on that Piper Turbo Navajo, and the preacher picked me up. We went straight to his church because I had to convince the congregation to allow me to go into business with them." Powers pulled in his wrestling interview skills and sold the local parishioners on it. "I got the thumbs up from all the congregation. I remember it very clearly," he says. Before he knew it, Powers owned half of the seven-acre tract on the beach.

Powers also obtained another piece of Carolina real estate when he built a waterslide in Greensboro, North Carolina. "I was going to go into the waterpark business. My only mistake was that I forgot that Myrtle Beach has about an eight- or nine-month season, and Greensboro has about a four-month season. And it's pretty cold to go down a waterslide in October."

His trip this summer to Charlotte, he says, will be a welcomed return. It also will mark his first Fanfest experience. "I have no idea if they'll even remember me ... 1978 is a long time ago," he says.

Powers, who will take part in the "Mid-Atlantic Memories" documentary being filmed during the event, says he's looking forward to reconnecting with a couple of his old wrestling cohorts. "I don't have a lot of friends in the business, but one is Angelo Mosca. He's been to two or three, and he has really enjoyed them. Another good buddy is Ox Baker."

Baker, whose shaved head and dark black, bushy eyebrows and mustache made the 6-5, 300-pounder one of the sport's top villains, occupies another footnote in Powers' mat history ledger. Powers' heel turn against Ernie Ladd with Baker in 1973 sparked possibly the most dangerous riot in pro wrestling history. It's aptly known in wrestling circles as "The Cleveland Riot."

Again, it was Powers who came up with the angle, simply using a bit of wrestling logic and marketing wisdom. "It was the most fun match I ever had," he says. "We were doing well, but I felt my houses were going to start to come down. I looked up and thought about it."

It was a case of pure demographics. "I'm a white boy, and the audience is 90 percent black. I'm a babyface and Ernie Ladd's a heel in downtown Cleveland. This has got to stop."

When the menacing Baker interfered to save Powers and hit Ladd with a series of heart punches, irate fans stormed the ring, hurling chairs and other foreign objects. "I had the match with Ladd, and I had Ox Baker run in, and I did a turn on Ernie," Powers relates. "They called it the worst riot of all time. Fans were so angry at me. There were 300 chairs flying. My local security left the building, and even the riot police would not come in."

Baker, notes Powers, still sports a reminder of that incident nearly 40 years ago. "Ox has still got the 14-inch scar on top of his head from taking a chair. Ox went against Ladd through Bruiser's territory and all over the country just through that exposure."

Just how did someone who didn't grow up a wrestling fan end up in the grunt-and-groan business? For Johnny Powers, born Dennis Waters, it was a matter of simple economics.

At 15 years of age, he was a tall and lean youngster and, at 6-3, was better suited to basketball. He eventually would drop out of college to pursue a wrestling career. "I was going to be a geologist. I was smart enough to ask my teacher how much geology teachers made up north. He told me and I said forget it. I was going to become a wrestler."

Powers' mother gave him money to go to a gym run by a wrestler named Jack Wentworth in the east side of Hamilton, Ontario. Powers bulked up nearly 100 pounds in less than a year. Genetically, says Powers, it was a growth spurt that had taken hold. He went from 6-3 and 160 pounds to 6-4 and well over 260.

Wentworth, a tough, English-born light heavyweight veteran who had toured the world, was no slouch.

Powers soon became a product of "The Factory" - the YMCAs and the old, hardcore gyms in Hamilton that spawned many of the sport's great wrestlers of that period. Powers learned the business from the ground up. "I kind of learned to come up the hard way. I never was a strong shooter, but I had to learn to survive real fast."

One day, says Powers, he made the mistake of questioning the legitimacy of professional wrestling. "Jack, I don't think wrestling is on the up and up," declared the naive greenhorn.

"He's 53 and I'm 16. And I'm thinking I can bench-press over 400 pounds. I'll hurt this old man," Powers thought to himself. Right?

Wrong. "He beat the living (stuffing) out of me. He hooked me left, hooked me right, he body-slammed me. He said when you get tired, you can tell me to stop. But when you're 16 and cocky and think you're infallible, you don't want to stop. So I bled from the nose, the ear, all over. I said, 'Man, you're 53, I like this business. Teach me.' And he taught me."

At the ripe age of 17, Powers found himself on the road to Detroit where he would gain experience working for promoter Bert Ruby. By the time he was 19, Powers was a well-versed, full-time performer who was more than ready for the big time.

"I was a pretty good all-around athlete, but for some reason in the wrestling business, it became my art form. All things kind of jelled. I had a reasonably innate sense of where I should be in the ring, what I should do with my body and what I should do with somebody else's body."

Powers soon discovered that he was a natural for the wrestling business. "Sometimes you walk through a door, and you were meant to be invited in. All the stars align so that somehow things fit for both sides."

Before he knew it, Powers was being matched up against one of the biggest stars on that era, Bruno Sammartino. "I couldn't even rent a car. I wasn't 21 when I started against Sammartino," says Powers, who had come highly recommended by the likes of Cowboy Bill Watts and Killer Kowalski to promoters Toots Mondt and Ace Freeman.

Being somewhat of a marketing whiz at an early age, Powers knew he had to create an appealing image in order to get over with the wrestling audience. "I had already gotten over as Lord Anthony Landsdowne. It was a Bert Ruby-Jack Britton name, but I guess because they thought Canadians were British. I was going to change my name, but I had hoped I wasn't going to have to do a job."

Powers pondered long and hard about a catchy new moniker. "I had always liked John Wayne, so that was easy for the first name. And I always wanted to feel like I was powerful in some stages, so that became John Power. So it just kind of morphed as I was going along.

"As I walked in to the television (studio), they asked me, 'So what's your name, kid?' I told them Johnny Powers. It just flowed. It was one of those serendipitous things. It resonated and hooked in place," says Powers, who legally changed his name in 1965.

Next was picking a finishing hold. "I liked the figure four leglock, because it actually could be a tightened-up hold that if some mark wanted to challenge it, you stood a reasonable chance of making it a shoot. When they asked me what my hold was, I told them it was a Powers Lock. To me it was unique because I had longer legs, and that morphed into a Power Lock."

The size was already there. Powers was 6-4 and fluctuated between 245 and 265. "It was pre-anabolic steroid. It was the tough, old-fashioned keep-at-it-everyday way."

There was no doubt about it. Powers could deliver the goods inside the squared circle. He also was intelligent, creative and always looking for a new adventure.

"I always was mentally agile. That doesn't mean I thought I was smart ... there's a difference. But I was scouting around for things to do. I actually found wrestling after I could gather the art form under what I call my umbrella. I was bored."

Powers, still a relative rookie in the wrestling profession, had bigger goals than becoming a top-tier talent in the ring. At the age of 22, Powers was a quasi-celebrity in Toronto, traveling across Canada marketing dumbbells, barbells and other exercise equipment, along with the likes of hockey star Bobby Hull and Olympic figure skating champions Otto and Maria Jelinek.

As a principal in Pro Management Inc., a sports celebrity management firm, he developed and took sports fitness equipment nationally on a major retail store promotion campaign all the while actively competing internationally as Canadian heavyweight champion. "I got introduced to a world at a very young, impressionable age and got a sense of selling tickets to things other than a bleacher seat in a coliseum," says Powers.

A bleached-blond "bad guy" early in his career, it was hard to maintain a heel persona when he went to Toronto and sold physical training products across Canada with young, aspiring hockey stars. Turning babyface was a marketing decision. But he always loved the concept of working heel. "I loved being a heel more than a babyface. The heel controls the ring more. A good heel is the creative maestro. And even if you're a better worker in the ring than the heel, from a creative, storytelling standpoint, there's so much you can do as a heel. You're limited as a babyface because historically there's so many avenues in which to participate, but as a heel it's only limited by your creative mind."

Constantly expanding his vision, Powers bought a small town from promoter Frank Tunney in the Toronto territory. He even had the unbridled audacity of asking the veteran matchmaker if he could buy points in the wrestling office. Tunney laughed at him. "Here's a cocky, 23-year-old kid and he wants a piece of the action," laughs Powers, Recognizing the youngster's drive and ambition, Tunney advised Powers to go across the border and talk to Buffalo-based promoter Pedro Martinez. Powers had wrestled for Martinez and had worked his way up through the main-event hierarchy. Martinez agreed to sell points to Powers in his territory.

"Actually, I bought Akron, Ohio, and I lost my (behind)," Powers laughs. Promoting, Powers discovered, was a slightly different "art form" than he had envisioned, but he wasn't ready to give up.

"For a working-class guy out of a steel town called Hamilton, Ontario, all of a sudden my world was expanded. I then thought that maybe I could function in other milieus and different environments." At the age of 24, Powers ended up buying part of Martinez's territory, and would help originate the global syndication of a black-and-white library of American pro wrestling films and videotapes with sales to Japan, Singapore, Philippines, Mexico and 23 other countries.

Powers, one of the top wrestling names in Canada and in the Buffalo-Cleveland market, continued to look for ways to expand his sphere of influence. "The NWA was pretty much a closed shop. At that time Vince McMahon Sr. was just regional. You kind of danced to their tune."

Being young, bold and confident, Powers asked his veteran adviser, Martinez, if they had to "put up" with playing second fiddle to the established organizations that basically ran the wrestling industry in this country. "We were trying to build a business, and we got stymied and blocked all the time," says Powers.

Not at all fearful of the consequences, Powers took the ball and ran with it, co-founding the National Wrestling Federation along with Martinez. In 1968 at the age of 25, Powers was in charge of his own national wrestling company.

"I was young, but nobody told me I shouldn't do it," he reasoned. "In fact, (Detroit promoter Ed) Farhat, Tunney, McMahon all pulled my H1 permit (visa) to get across the border three times. They tried to keep me out. It was because they couldn't figure me out. That's because I don't think I could figure myself out."

Powers' group got off to an impressive start. "We had guys like Abdullah The Butcher on the third match. In my opinion, for a period of time we had the most stacked-talent cards that existed in the U.S. and probably anywhere. We could move the talent up and down in all kinds of different directions."

It wouldn't be long before the superstar-turned-promoter would achieve a lofty status as one of the biggest American wrestling celebrities in Japan. With the legendary Shohei "Giant" Baba affiliated with the dominant National Wrestling Alliance, the younger Antonio Inoki was looking for a comparable association with another major U.S. promotion. Powers, with his newly created National Wrestling Federation, was more than willing to do business with the ambitious Inoki. The two, only 30 days apart in age, instantly connected. They were both rebels willing and ready to shake up the wrestling establishment.

Three years after helping create the NWF, Powers, the group's world heavyweight champion and top star, sold it in 1973 to Inoki and New Japan Wrestling. "I sold that to Inoki, and it just clicked. Inoki was ready to be a superstar. He was iconoclastic. He was a rebel."

Powers was defeated by Inoki for the NWF world heavyweight title on December 10, 1973, at Tokyo's Sumo Hall. Going up against Inoki, says Powers, was one of the greatest thrills he ever experienced in the wrestling business. "Even though I lost the title, there was a majesty about the match in Japan. There was an international presence about that match in Tokyo. The presentation was unreal. I never before felt the kind of enormous pressure and attention that came with it."

Powers' three wrestling heroes were Lou Thesz, Buddy Rogers and Johnny Valentine, and he took notes along the way to develop his own hybrid style. "I was morphing Thesz's style with Valentine's style, along with a Larry Chene-Buddy Rogers style. I mixed it up and tried to make it a Powers style. It takes you about four of five years to come into your own."

The perfect wrestler, he says, would be a composite of the three. "I still believe that a combination of Thesz, Valentine and Rogers were innovative in my era. They broke ground. The business has changed because of the highspots. Larry Chene could do one death walk over the edge of the mat and hit the concrete floor in an arena or auditorium, and people would go quiet that he might have died. Now the guys can do so many highspots that it's diluted the effect of the highspots and it's become a gymnastics exercise."

"And I'm not being disrespectful to the box office, because the box office is great," adds Powers. "But it's changed the physical interface with the audience. Even a good story or a good book or whatever has to stay close enough to reality and yet push the boundaries so you're exploring new arenas of imagination."

Powers especially liked working with Valentine, although in one of their early encounters he admits he didn't quite comprehend Valentine's unique ring psychology. "I had so much respect for him. One time we had a match in Toronto, I was already primed and ready to lock up. He wouldn't let me even touch him for 15 minutes. I thought this was going to die, and I was really getting frustrated. Valentine was almost 15 years my senior, and I had so much respect for his art form. I let it be, but with somebody else I wouldn't have done that."

Eventually, though, Powers "got it." "When we finally touched, which was probably 16 or 17 minutes in, the crowd blew out. Now I understood Valentine's art form. We went for about an hour, and we probably put on eight different holds, and we were on the mat part of time. But it was an artistic success."

To go up against six-time world champion Thesz in his hometown of Hamilton was an honor for Powers. In the "uniqueness" category, Thesz ranks as Powers' second favorite opponent. "I wrestled Lou Thesz in my hometown when I was 22 years old. It was a thrill. Outdoors, in my old hometown ballpark. I revered him. Not only did he have the reputation ... he was just so classy."

Thesz, who respected workers who could really wrestle, would test Powers early in their encounter. "About the time we went to lock up, he bitch-slapped me to sort of test my mettle. I looked at him and thought that he could probably hook me to death," relates Powers.

In total awe of the master matman but wondering how he might respond, Powers pondered his next move. "Do I punch him back in the mouth, or do I take it and keep on going. I bet that I could punch the heck out of him ... I'll still go down, but I'll punch the heck out of this old man." Thesz, however, was one step ahead of him.

"As I thought about it, he broke out in a smile. I knew he was watching me thinking this process through. He was literally reading this kid's mind."

The end result, says Powers, was never in question. Thesz would "allow" Powers to have some dignity while going down in defeat. "Of course he was going to go over the entire time, but instead of beating me in the middle of the ring, he set it up so I hooked a leg over the second rope, he dropkicked me, I fell back and got counted out."

Another favorite, says Powers, albeit one with a style far different from Valentine or Thesz, was Abdullah The Butcher. "I always had great matches with Abdullah. I could let him go. If you're comfortable enough with who you are, then you allow that other individual to get over and become comfortable with who they are. Sometimes it's limited. Sometimes it's unbelievably creative. For sheer craziness, going up in the stands, bloods, guts and thunder, it was Abby."

Much like Abdullah, The Sheik (Ed Farhat) was another ideal opponent for the babyface Powers. "The Sheik and I sold out and turned away five or six thousand people. Twelve thousand was a sellout at Cleveland Arena. We were sold out well before. And this was when we had 48 shows a year in Cleveland. To draw a building and a half ahead of time ... there's no feeling like that in the world."

He even presented the first "Super Bowl of Wrestling" in 1972 at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium.

"I went to a Ringling Brothers three-ring circus. It was boring in ring one and two, but ring three was terrific. Why couldn't I do that in the wrestling business?"

So Powers booked Municipal Stadium, got three rings, bought the Ten Commandments chariot from the back lot at Paramount, and booked 50 wrestlers. The mega-show was headlined by a match between Powers and Johnny Valentine. Three rings were set up, side by side, with more than one match going on at a time.

A forerunner to the major stadium shows, the ambitious event was, by most accounts, a financial flop despite attracting major media coverage. While Municipal Stadium held in excess of 70,000 people, the "Super Bowl of Wrestling" reportedly drew less than 15,000.

"It cost me about 30 grand. But that's risk-taking. I drew probably 60 or 70 thousand dollars. You can be ahead of your time. There's a magic to box office. Anybody that tells you they know the formula ... it's not true. The public knows the formula. They either buy it or don't buy it."

Powers was a savvy booker and promoter, but he admitted making some mistakes when he went to the Carolinas.

"I had retired from the business after Cleveland in 1975. I was managing a small public company that owned the hockey arena franchise and ice skating franchise and a whole bunch of things like that. I was brought in to creatively do a turnaround on it from ticket sales and revenue streams."

In the meantime, his old partner, Martinez, had started a venture known as the IWA, the first truly national wrestling organization, along with Einhorn. "He was a money man who was a wrestling fan," Powers says of Einhorn. "He wasn't intelligent about the business. Pedro hooked up with him. It was Einhorn's idea and his network. At that time he had a good-sized lock on all the collegiate basketball programming. He sold that to Corinthian Broadcasting for a pretty good sum of money at that time."

Martinez had worked with the Chicago businessman for only a couple of months when he called Powers asking for help. "Pete, I'm not in the wrestling business, I'm doing fine," Powers explained to Martinez. "I'm going to be taking a reasonable share in a small public company. I'm in the sports promotion business, not the wrestling business."

But Martinez told Powers that the new group had no underlying territory. They were doing fine in most cases, he said, but were running shows across the country with what amounted to "a bunch of renegades." In other words, says Powers, they had no basic business.

"In a territory, you can have one or two or three good towns, just like McMahon had in New York and Boston and Philadelphia. But you better have spot shows to keep the boys booked five or six or seven nights a week and keep them out of trouble and also to amortize your territory cost," says Powers.

Martinez knew that his only chance of success was convincing Powers to come out of retirement and take over the creative and booking end. "Nobody understands what I'm talking about. You do. I trained you how to build it and do it," he told Powers.

"As a favor to Pedro, and not so much as I wanted to go back into the business, I agreed," says Powers. He told Martinez to book him as a worker.

Powers flew in from New Jersey, rented a car and drove to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he already had a television show. "I booked myself on some radio promotions, got a map out and spotted some things, found the towns like Mount Airy around there, and booked the buildings. Within about four to six weeks, I had the beginning of an infrastructure in which there was territory in at least three states - North and South Carolina and Virginia."

Johnny Powers was a natural promoter.

"I knew what to look for. There was nothing I didn't know about the business from a building of a territory (standpoint). I had done that with Pedro. But with Pedro it had been dormant. It was dead. I went and rebooked all the television shows in Schenectady, Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Erie, all those towns. That was my doing. That was me going in places like Rochester and paying a modest $400 a week for 13 weeks. I owned the hour. I had done all of that before."

The IWA, with its top-notch production values, was ahead of the larger promotions in a number of aspects. The company offered guaranteed money to attract top names and placed its tapings in TV markets all around the country. Slick production innovations such as freeze frames and slow-motion replays were utilized. The territory began slowly building, with Winston-Salem as its key town.

Then, suddenly, Powers got a call from Martinez informing him that Einhorn had canceled all the television shows. "We're off the air as of this weekend," Martinez told Powers.

According to Martinez, Vince McMahon Sr. had called the owner of Corinthian Broadcasting and asked him why he was letting his "prize guy," who he had just paid a lot of money to buy his collegiate basketball network, be involved in a not-so-legitimate business like pro wrestling. Einhorn was smack dab in the middle of McMahon's territory with a strong television presence on WOR in New York. The IWA was viewed as an "outlaw" promotion operating outside the jurisdiction of the NWA and WWWF.

"None of the promoters ever helped one another. That's a myth. If there was ever any cooperation, it was of a self-serving nature," says Powers. "He (McMahon Sr.) was worried because Einhorn went to the ballpark in New Jersey and drew $108,000. That's not shabby in '75. McMahon was worried. He was still a regional promoter."

Powers, in fact, had tried to by the territory from McMahon and Mondt back in the late '60s. "I was cocky enough to want to try it," says Powers. "Pedro Martinez had once owned part of the territory from Toots Mondt. Why couldn't I go in with his understanding and buy out McMahon?"

Einhorn lost an estimated $500,000 and the promotion effectively folded in October 1975. Unable to get into major arenas such as Madison Square Garden and the Nassau Coliseum, the sports magnate called it quits.

Powers, meanwhile, had already moved his family down to the Carolinas, and had given up a position and a stock portfolio. But he wasn't ready to quit. "I came here to help you out. I don't think I want to do this," he told Martinez.

Powers asked for a couple of hours. He called stations in Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Lynchburg and Charleston. He asked the station managers to keep the Saturday IWA wrestling slot open. "I put together a television show. I had a show on that weekend. I incorporated IWA wrestling in North Carolina. I changed the name of the television show, and off we went."

Having been used to the three-state territory with the Buffalo-Cleveland operation, Powers tightened up the territory template in the Carolinas and Virginia. "I was very familiar with the formulas and the setups. I had always believed that if I could get in a car and drive somewhere, then I could influence the television station, the media and the arena. I just continued on, but with a smaller base."

Some of the talent left. Some went to the opposition. "They stole The Mongols and eventually ended up stealing Igor. Mascaras went off on his own way. But I kept Brower, Ladd and a bunch of those guys," says Powers.

"I already knew the (Bulldog) Brower-Powers program would work, so I used that as a main seeding for a territorial angle. I ran that for about a year, and then I found out Winston-Salem had cashed me in."

It was a crushing blow to Powers and his plans to strengthen his company's presence. "It was our biggest town, and we had come close to selling out there. All you need is one good town and a couple medium towns, along with a bunch of fringe towns, and you've got yourself a ballpark. That's the same thing Crockett once had. Then we went to court, and I lost. I probably should have never thought that I'd win."

The battles that ensued over arenas in Crockett's territory ended up in expensive court fights. Powers had loved a challenge, and that's why he had bought out the territory from Martinez. "But when we lost Winston-Salem," he says, "it took the core town out."

Powers had contended that two North Carolina promoters - Jim Crockett of Charlotte and Joe Murnick of Raleigh - had illegally controlled the booking of wrestling shows in several regional towns. The lawsuit sought $1.5 million in damages as a result of business allegedly lost because of the leasing arrangements with the promoters.

Cities named in the suit were Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Fayetteville, North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina; and Richmond, Virginia. The suit claimed that the IWA was being kept out of those cities by illegal lease and protection agreements that gave Crockett and Murnick monopoly over the public arenas suitable for wrestling. It contended the leases were in violation of state and federal laws.

The city of Winston-Salem was named as a defendant because of a decision by the mayor and Board of Aldermen to give Crockett a lease at its coliseum for 12 events a year.

"That didn't mean that other buildings didn't give you a lock," says Powers. "We actually had locks in our Buffalo territory. But it was like a chess move that caught me unexpectedly, and I didn't have the talent and monetary resources to survive in it. Sometimes the door is only half open. The product isn't fully the right product at the right time to get legs underneath it."

It took more than two years for the court case to be resolved. In 1978 the federal jury ruled that Crockett did not have a stranglehold on auditoriums in Charlotte and Winston-Salem for his events. Powers had charged in the suit that Crockett's leases for wrestling venues in Charlotte and Winston-Salem violated antitrust laws, but the jury found there were no violations. "The jury's decision vindicates Jim Crockett Promotions of illegally operating wrestling events in Charlotte. It shows that the Crockett family operated lawfully," Crockett's attorney would say after the verdict.

Powers ran the territory for nearly three years. But he had seen the writing on the wall.

"Business was going OK, but I was in the survival mode after the court case. I had leased a modest Lincoln Town Car with a moon roof. I pulled up at a ballpark, and Sonny King and Mike Boyette and Big Bad John were there. Their eyes were so glassy most of the time that I was always afraid they wouldn't find the ring." Powers says King approached him and accused him of making "lots of money." He told King that the car he was driving was leased.

"Sonny said he wanted to buy into the office. I asked him how much he was going to pay."

"Nothing" was King's reply. "In fact," adds Powers, "he wanted to take over the office and control the office. He said he didn't think I was doing a good job with the town. That meant I didn't put Sonny King on top as the world champion. He just felt he was God's gift to humanity and the wrestling business in particular." Powers says King then told him that he had an attorney in Chicago, and that "they were going to come in and crack me wide open."

Powers took off three weeks, closed the territory down, ran reruns on TV, and explained to the stations that it was a summer hiatus. King and his crew were gone by the time Powers returned.

There was a time, says Powers, when he walked around with a .357 Magnum in a small purse while carrying large sums of cash to make the payday. He had another wrestler carry a gun and guard the purse while Powers went to the ring. "It was a cash business then," he says. "We had an interesting scenario with some of those boys."

Johnny Powers retired as a pro wrestler for the final time in 1983 at age 40. With more than 5,000 bouts in 27 countries to his credit, he eventually figured it was time to move on to other ventures.

A media and brand builder, the cerebral Powers would become heavily involved with the production and marketing of television, pay-per-view programming live events and the licensing and sale of branded consumer products.

Since retiring he's been in corporate finance, did small cap public companies, and some real estate syndication. "I think I retired seven times, but I didn't tell anybody. I started playing around in real estate because it was a lot easier on the body than the wrestling business. I basically retired at 39 in 1982."

In recent years Powers served as a director and promoter for mixed martial arts shows. His stable of fighters included Dan Bobish, a past Division III NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion and Ultimate Fighting King of the Cage champ.

Powers was an innovative force in the MMA world dating back to his time in Japan where he helped develop the strong man style. "I worked stiff-style with Inoki, and they liked that. They liked that strong style," says Powers, who was known as "The Iron Man" in Japan. "What was really taekwondo I introduced that style to Inoki. I think Inoki, Gotch, Thesz and Powers coming in with the title kind of kicked off the MMA world."

Powers, who did more than 30 tours of Japan, was honored in 2006 with having developed a unique fight style and given the Japanese title of soke, which means family head or originator.

As a worker, promoter and booker, Powers says he was getting tapped out. "I think there's only so much creative juice that all of us come into this world with. I thought that maybe I didn't have enough want to, and if I didn't have enough want to, I was sure I wasn't going to be able to contribute. And I was always embarrassed if I wasn't giving at least my max most of the time as a booker, as a promoter, as a worker. I just got tired." After all, there was very little Powers hadn't at least tried in the wrestling business.

His last "official" match was against old nemesis Bulldog Brower in Lagos, Nigeria, in front of an audience of 60,000, although he would return the following year for a few matches in the Caribbean. He made the emotional decision to try another career.

There were no more wrestling mountains left for Johnny Powers to conquer. He had enjoyed a near-seven-year-run in the Buffalo area. "That's a long run in any kind of art form. The TV was hot. The town was hot. I didn't make too many mistakes as a booker."

Powers was successful because of a determination and drive. "I didn't come from money. I wasn't a Trump whose dad already had a multimillion-dollar real estate business. Everything I did was a grassroots, start-up business. If you don't have a deep-pocket fallback, you can't weather the ups and downs that come with every business.

"I'm working class, so if I go and try to figure out something, I go and ask the waiter or the bartender or the doorman or the cab driver. I ask the regular folks that are in the trenches of life."

In the end, says Powers, he was basically a ticket salesman who loved to market things. "I actually consider myself as an artist in the wrestling business, but basically I'm a ticket salesman. If it's to sell a product to a congregation in Folly Beach, South Carolina, or in the wrestling business. It's a similar form of persuasion."

He'd still do it again. "But for 10 years ... not 20. I would have figured out a different way to satisfy my creative urges ... I became a large star for a few years. And then, the way things often go, you get usurped. But in the early and mid-'70s, it was a great run. All the way to '80."

The sport has taken its toll on him. He has an artificial hip, a knee replacement and has had both shoulders replaced. He also suffers from a chronic bad back. "I was a power lifter. I bulked up, I wasn't a juice guy. When you start doing 500- or 600-pound squats and deadlifts and all that stuff, when you quit, you don't heal. Your body just tells you what you did all those years. I walk a little bent over. I can straighten up for a short while and look good."

He returned to his home area to be closer to his 95-year-old mother. "Irish and Italians are mama's boys. I'm blessed she's still here. I was on the road for so long. I lost my dad when I was on the road. I made a pact with myself that I'd be close to her at this stage of the game."

These days, he says, he's quite content at home reading a good book. Or writing poetry. "I probably average reading five or six hardcover books a week. I don't have another creative passion. That's kind of gone."

What does he say when he looks back at a career that has had its share of hits and misses, but one that was never anything less than exciting? "We gave it a good try."

-Mike Mooneyham, a writer and editor with Charleston's The Post and Courier since 1979, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on professional wrestling, and his weekly wrestling column has been in continuous publication longer than any other in the country.